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THE   PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 


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THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK   •    BOSTON   •    CHICAGO 
ATLANTA   •    SAN    FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON   •    BOMBAY   •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF 
COMMON  SENSE 


BY 


FREDERIC   HARRISON 


THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

1907 

All  rights  reierved 


Copyright,  1907, 
By  the   MACMILLAN   COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  October,  1907. 


NorhjDoB  ^regB 

J.  S.  Gushing  Co.  —  Benvick  &  Smith  Co. 

Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


PREFATORY    NOTE 

The  present  volume,  being  the  second  in  a  series  of 
collected  studies,  is  a  companion  to  TJie  Creed  of  a 
Layman,  published  in  April  1907.  It  is  designed  to  form 
a  summary  of  the  philosophical  grounds  on  which  the 
preceding  work  was  based ;  and  it  carries  on  the  auto- 
biographical account  of  the  stages  by  which  the  author 
reached  those  conclusions.  Most  of  the  Essays  were 
papers  read  at  the  Metaphysical  Society  between  the  years 
1 871  and  1880,  or  were  founded  on  discussions  that  had 
taken  place  there.  The  whole  of  the  Introduction  and 
the  Essays  numbered  iii.  iv.  vii.  viii.  x.  xi.  xvi.  xxiii.  (about 
one-third  of  the  volume)  are  either  new,  or  have  been 
published  only  in  the  small  organ  of  the  Positivist  Society 
of  Clifford's  Inn.  The  remaining  Essays  were  published 
in  the  Fortnightly  ReviewhQX.yiQtn  the  years  1870  and  1892, 
and  in  the  Nineteenth  Cent7iry  between  1877  and  1886,  and 
the  author  desires  to  express  his  thanks  to  the  proprietors 
of  those  publications  for  their  courteous  permission  to 
allow  the  re-issue.  As  these  pieces  have  long  ceased  to 
be  current,  it  is  believed  that  the  contents  of  this  volume 
will  be  found  to  be  practically  new  to  the  modern  reader 


VI  PREFATORY  NOTE 

as  well  as  to  the  younger  students  of  philosophy.  And 
the  writer  now  in  his  old  age  submits  to  all  who  are  seek- 
ing some  sound  basis  of  life  Thoughts  formed  in  his 
maturity  after  exhaustive  discussions  with  some  of  the 
first  thinkers  of  our  time. 


CONTENTS 


INTRODUCTION 


I.  On    the   Supposed   Necessity  of  Certain  Meta 

PHYSICAL  Problems 

II.  The  Subjective  Synthesis 

III.  Synthesis    .... 

IV.  The  Three  Great  Syntheses 
V.  The  Human  Synthesis 

VI.  Lewes'  Problems  of  Life  and  Mind 

VII.  The  Social  Factor  in  Psychology 

VIII.  The  Absolute    . 

IX.  The  Basis  of  Morals 

X.  The  Ethical  Conference 

XI.  Natural  Theology  . 

XII.  Law  of  the  Three  States 

XIII.  The  Soul  before  and  after  Death 

XIV.  Heaven       .... 
XV.  Reply  to  Criticisms 

XVI.  The  Future  of  Agnosticism 

XVII.  Mr.  Huxley's  Controversies 

XVIII.  Mr.  Huxley's  Ironicon    . 

XIX.  Mr.  a.  Balfour's  Foundations  of  Belief 

vii 


PAGE 

ix 


I 

21 

42 
46 

63 

98 

118 

126 

137 
152 

159 
170 

184 

196 

225 

249 

268 

300 

314 


Vlll 


CONTENTS 


ESSAY 

XX.     Harriet  Martineau's  Positive  Philosophy 


XXI.     The  Ghost  of  Religion 

XXII.    Agnostic  Metaphysics 

XXIII.     Science  and  Humanity 
What  Religio7i  Means 
The  Probletn  of  Life    . 
Free  Thought  versus  Faith 
Solution  of  the  Dilemma 


PAGE 

325 
333 
352 

393 

395 
404 

411 
413 


THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF   COMMON  SENSE 

The  function  of  Philosophy  is  to  form  the  foundation  of  Morals, 
Politics,  and  Religion.  It  is  not  an  end  in  itself:  it  is 
the  indispensable  means  of  reaching  an  end  otherwise  un- 
attainable. —  Professor  Levy-Bruhl,  after  Comte. 

INTRODUCTION 

In  a  former  book  —  The  Creed  of  a  Layman  —  I  set  forth 
the  grounds  on  which  I  had  found  peace  in  a  religion  of 
Common  Sense  —  the  silent,  it  may  be,  unconscious,  and 
too  often  the  unavowed  faith  of  many  good  and  sensible 
men.  I  shall  now  endeavour  to  show  the  intellectual  basis 
on  which  such  a  faith  is  grounded ;  and  this  I  venture  to  de- 
scribe as  The  Philosophy  of  Common  Sense.  Rational 
Philosophy  indeed,  from  the  time  of  the  early  Greek  sages 
down  to  Auguste  Comte,  has  never  been  anything  but  the 
Common  Sense  of  the  best  minds  systematised  and  corre- 
lated to  a  righteous  life.  For  some  sixty  years  I  have  studied 
competing  systems  of  Philosophy,  finding  some  truths  and 
much  verbiage  in  all.  And  long  ago  I  came  to  see  that 
philosophy,  like  Religion,  is  much  more  simple,  more  practi- 
cal, closer  to  a  strenuous  life  on  earth,  than  philosophers  are 
thought  to  admit. 

At  the  outset  a  question  may  be  asked  —  Why  should  we 
trouble  about  Philosophy  at  all?  What  good  will  it  do  us? 
Is  it  not  to  waste  time  on  a  superfluity  of  Culture?  No 
mistake  could  be  greater  —  and  indeed  more  dangerous.  All 
sane  and  serious  men  have  some  general  ideas  which  lie  at 


IX 


X  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

the  back  of  their  brains,  whether  they  are  conscious  of  them 
or  not,  whether  they  ever  reduce  them  to  formal  proposi- 
tions, or  suffer  them  silently  to  influence  their  lives.  This 
is  their  philosophy. 

Consistent  and  efificient  conduct  is  impossible  without 
some  settled  cast  of  the  mind.  Many  may  never  have  heard 
of  "Differentiation,"  "The  Categorical  Imperative,"  "Mon- 
ism," or  "Pragmatism."  But  they  do  believe  in  certain 
dominant  ideas ;  and  these  in  the  long  run  determine  their 
conduct.  Idle  fribbles  perhaps,  and  men  and  women  who 
have  no  mind  of  their  own  in  anything,  but  are  the  docile 
slaves  of  circumstance,  whim,  or  stronger  natures,  can  hardly 
be  said  to  have  any  philosophy,  as  they  can  hardly  be  said 
to  have  either  mind  of  their  own  or  will  of  their  own.  But 
even  they  are  dominated  by  the  philosophy  of  those  around 
them. 

In  this  age,  when  orthodox  doctrines  are  melting  away,  a 
dangerous  sophism  is  coming  into  fashion  that  religion  is 
entirely  a  matter  of  feeling,  not  of  understanding;  so  that, 
when  the  dogmas  of  the  Gospel  are  found  to  fail.  Christians 
are  told  that  faith  has  no  need  of  creed,  that  holy  emotions 
constitute  a  working  religion,  without  any  substratum  of 
positive  belief.  This  is  in  truth  the  very  dry-rot  of  religion 
in  senile  decay.  Every  form  of  religion  worth  the  name, 
Theocracy,  Judaism,  Polytheism,  Christianity,  Romanism, 
Puritanism,  Islam,  Unitarianism,  even  modern  Theism  —  all 
have  rested  upon  a  definite,  coherent  body  of  doctrine. 

For  ages  this  has  been  the  solid  power  of  the  Catholic 
Church ;  and  Rome,  at  any  rate,  holds  to  this  still.  A 
religion  of  bare  emotion  rapidly  degenerates  into  gross  ex- 
travagances, and  even  foul  abuses.  The  fanatics  of  the 
Middle  Ages  —  Flagellants,  Anabaptists,  Mystics,  like  Anti- 
nomians.  Shakers,  Dukhobors,  Mormons,  and  Revivalists  — 


INTRODUCTION  xi 

threw  over  rational  doctrines  and  flung  themselves  upon  the 
storm-driven  sea  of  pious  zeal.  Oriental  and  African  zealots 
often  drifted  into  ghastly  excesses  under  the  influence  of 
irrational  emotions.  No  religion  can  guide  or  purify  man's 
life  unless  it  rest  upon  a  solid  bed  of  assured  convictions.  It 
would  be  a  wretched  apology  for  the  latter  days  of  the  Gospel 
that  it  has  no  need  of  reason  for  the  faith  that  is  in  it. 

Efficient  religion  implies  a  corresponding  philosophy  of 
the  World  and  of  Man.  Not  indeed  a  Metaphysic  of  Being, 
a  Canon  of  Reality  and  Truth,  nor  an  Analysis  of  Conscious- 
ness and  the  like !  But  behind  every  serious  and  practical 
mode  of  religion  there  must  rest,  in  a  more  or  less  conscious 
form,  an  intelligible  view  of  the  relation  of  mankind  to  the 
world  of  Nature  and  Humanity  around  us,  some  overmaster- 
ing source  of  Duty,  some  ground  of  Hope,  some  object  of 
Reverence. 

To  have  no  ideal  of  Reverence,  Hope,  or  Duty,  to  have 
no  sense  of  relation  to  Things  or  Persons  around  the  indi- 
vidual (even  as  an  unconscious  habit  of  mind)  —  this  is  to 
be  without  any  religion.  And  all  the  yearning  in  the  world 
and  all  possible  fervour  of  spirit,  devoid  of  reasonable  belief, 
can  end  in  nothing  but  constant  change  and  spiritual  con- 
fusion. The  Philosophy  may  be  nothing  but  an  alembic 
wherein  is  distilled  solid  good  sense.  But  no  religion  can 
work  for  good  or  endure  for  a  generation  unless,  as  its  base 
and  backbone,  it  hold  some  theory  of  the  World  it  has  to 
live  in  and  the  Fellowmen  it  has  to  work  with. 

In  the  present  book  I  seek  to  trace  how  I  came  by  degrees 
to  solve  the  main  problems  of  Thought,  as  in  a  former  book 
I  sought  to  trace  the  same  evolution  in  problems  of  Religion. 
I  can  promise  the  reader  that  I  will  trouble  him  with  no 
hard  words,  psychological  enigmas,  or  double  acrostics  in 
dog-Greek.     Metaphysics  tend  more  and  more  to  be  carried 


xii  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

on  in  the  Unknown  Tongues  vouchsafed  to  the  elect  which 
require  years  and  years  of  study  to  master.  The  modern 
Metaphysical  Tongue  is  far  more  bewildering  to  the  un- 
learned than  either  Esperanto  or  VolapUk.  In  fact  Meta- 
physics are  mainly  kept  alive  by  the  internecine  war  of  the 
rival  Esperantists  and  Volapiikians  of  Philosophy  to  obtain 
recognition  of  their  respective  jargon.  The  so-called  science 
of  Metaphysics  resembles  an  elaborate  geography  of  an 
imaginary  and  invisible  planet,  described  in  an  artificial 
language  which  no  one  but  the  geographer  himself  can  apply. 
The  result  of  these  Nibelungen  combats,  wherein  hero  slays 
hero  in  some  legendary  world,  is  too  often  the  dying  sigh 
of  Hegel  —  that  he  had  but  one  disciple  who  understood 
him  —  and  he  misunderstood  him. 

I  must  guard  my  words  against  being  misunderstood  my- 
self. I  know  that  Metaphysics  have  absorbed  many  of  the 
most  profound  minds  that  Humanity  can  boast.  I  recognise 
the  imperishable  value  of  their  labours.  I  admit  that  meta- 
physicians, even  of  these  latter  days,  exhibit  extraordinary 
subtlety  and  intellectual  power.  I  agree  with  them  that  no 
man  can  pretend  to  speak  about  philosophy  at  all  unless  he 
has  done  his  best  to  master  the  vast  evolution  of  Metaphysical 
Thought.  I  have  done  this ;  and  over  a  long  life  of  study 
I  have  followed  this  most  fascinating  form  of  the  higher 
meditation. 

I  claim  to  have  mastered  the  cryptic,  but  perhaps  indis- 
pensable, language  in  which  these  subtle  theories  have  to  be 
cast.  I  claim  to  have  understood  these  philosophers;  I  am 
not  blind  to  their  marvellous  ingenuity,  their  heroic  patience, 
their  noble  detachment  from  grosser  claims.  And  knowing 
as  I  do  the  impulse  in  us  to  face  these  primordial  problems, 
having  given  years  of  life  to  get  to  the  bottom  of  these  inter- 
minable answers  to  the  eternal  riddles,  acknowledging,  as  I 


INTRODUCTION  xiii 

must,  the  invaluable  service  to  mankind  both  of  the  problems 
and  of  the  answers,  I  affirm  that  the  mass  of  what  is  called 
Metaphysics  is  the  fruitless  search  after  insoluble  puzzles :  a 
search  which  it  is  wise  to  understand  as  an  intellectual  g}'m- 
nastic,  but  whereon  nothing  practical,  real,  or  true  can  be 
built. 

The  word  Metaphysics,  like  almost  ever}^  word  used  in 
this  study,  is  so  elastic  that  I  must  define  the  sense  in  which 
I  use  it  here.  It  includes  Ontology,  i.e.  the  knowledge  of 
abstract  Being,  of  Things-in-themselves,  of  the  Real  sub- 
stratum of  the  Universe,  of  the  Absolute  Existence  which 
does,  or  may,  lie  behind  the  sum  of  Appearance  known 
through  the  human  senses  to  our  conceptions.  We  say  that 
the  search,  which  for  thousands  of  years  has  occupied  some 
of  the  acutest  of  human  brains,  has  led  to  nothing  and  can 
lead  to  nothing  for  reasons  which  sound  Philosophy  explains. 

Under  Metaphysics  I  include  the  ultimate  analysis  of  Con- 
sciousness, the  ultimate  explanation  of  the  relations  of  INIind 
and  Matter,  and  the  absolute  form  of  either.  I  include  also 
the  search  into  First  Cause,  Final  Causes,  or  the  abstract 
meaning  of  Cause.  In  Metaphysics  I  include  the  relation  of 
human  consciousness  to  some  imagined  Universal  Conscious- 
ness. I  include  the  search  into  some  imagined  substance 
underlying  and  over-reaching  Life  —  call  it  Soul  or  anything 
of  the  kind.  Lastly,  in  Metaphysical  impotence  we  include 
the  abysmal  problem  of  Freedom  and  Necessity.  Sound 
Philosophy  will  seek  to  measure  the  enormous  volume  of 
high  intelligence  that  has  been  exhausted  on  all  these  sub- 
jects, and  then  will  pass  on  to  practical  Knowledge,  as  it 
passed  on  from  the  Philosopher's  Stone  or  the  I^lixir  of  Life. 

But  sound  Philosophy  of  course  does  include  a  rational 
Psychology,  the  Laws  of  Thought,  the  analysis  of  the  Menial 
processes,  Logic,  and  the  Organum  of  reasoning  and  demon- 


xiv  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

stration.  It  does  include  a  system  to  explain  the  practical 
relations  of  man  to  the  outer  world,  of  man  to  his  fellowmen, 
of  the  evolution  of  life  and  of  society.  But  it  refuses  to  be 
labelled  under  Materialism,  or  Monism,  or  Agnosticism,  or 
Phenomenalism,  Realism,  Idealism,  Panlogism,  or  Pragma- 
tism. All  of  these  are  more  or  less  abortive  attempts  to 
solve  insoluble  problems. 

Sound  Philosophy  has  tested  a  thousand  answers.  It  finds 
them  all  equally  idle.  It  does  not  attempt  to  show  they  are 
false.  It  admits  that  they  are  wonderful  feats  of  building 
without  bricks,  or  rather  of  building  with  mere  clouds.  They 
might  all  be  true,  if  indeed  there  be  a  world  wherein  out  of 
clouds  we  may  fashion  "the  gorgeous  palaces,  the  solemn 
temples,  the  great  globe  itself."  Philosophic  good  sense 
watches  this  insubstantial  pageant  fade,  this  baseless  vision 
dissolve,  and  leave  not  a  rack  behind. 

To  repudiate  Metaphysics  is  not  to  disparage  the  pro- 
found achievements  of  abstract  thinkers,  ancient  and  modern, 
or  the  canons  of  a  systematic  First  Philosophy.  Plato,  Aris- 
totle, and  their  successors  in  antiquity.  Bacon,  Descartes, 
Leibnitz,  Spinoza,  Locke,  Hume,  Kant,  Fichte,  Hegel  —  all 
profoundly  modified  the  thought  of  the  world,  and  each  has 
given  us  imperishable  truths.  So  far  as  Positivism  is  con- 
cerned, all  of  these  men  are  commemorated  in  the  Calendar 
of  Great  Men,  and  have  been  duly  honoured  by  Comte. 
Some  of  them  undoubtedly  are  classed  as  Metaphysicians, 
and  all  of  them  have  laid  down  as  truths  much  that  no  one 
to-day  can  accept.  But  the  rare  value  of  much  that  they 
taught,  and  the  necessity  for  understanding  what  they  did 
teach,  even  for  study  of  their  very  extravagances  and  errors, 
is  what  no  rational  student  of  philosophy  can  dispute.  Their 
very  failures  are  more  illuminating  than  the  accepted  truisms 
of  lesser  men. 


INTRODUCTION  XV 

In  the  permanent  residuum  of  truth  left  by  the  specula- 
tions of  these  great  thinkers,  and  in  the  entire  history  of 
Metaphysics  from  Plato  to  Mr.  Arthur  Balfour,  there  is  one 
profound  lesson,  one  and  the  same  Constant  amid  a  thousand 
Variables.  That  truth  is  the  Limitation  of  the  Human 
Mind.  There  is  no  paradox  in  recognising  the  achievements 
of  metaphysical  thinkers,  even  in  admitting  the  indispensable 
nature  of  their  work,  if  we  mean  that  the  fundamental  lesson 
of  Philosophy  is  the  knowledge  of  what  the  Mind  can  do, 
and  what  it  cannot  do.  That  essential  condition  underlies 
all  serious  thinking,  and  is  really  decisive  both  in  Theology 
and  in  Philosophy ;  for  from  the  very  dawn  of  religion  as  a 
system  of  beliefs,  Theology  has  been  inextricably  associated 
with  these  ontological  problems. 

Theology  has  ever  lived  upon  them,  and  still  lives  on  them 
to-day.  And  it  has  needed  ages  of  intense  meditation  and 
the  waste  of  consummate  intellects  to  convince  us  that  the 
quest  must  be  abandoned  as  hopeless,  mischievous,  irra- 
tional. Philosophic  Thought  could  not  become  truly  rational 
until  it  had  solved  the  problem  of  the  real  laws  of  the  think- 
ing Mind.  Religion  could  not  face  the  modern  world  until 
it  had  freed  itself  from  the  insoluble  problem  of  the  Quest  of 
the  Holy  Grail  it  had  long  so  passionately  sought. 

The  note  of  every  original  work  of  Metaphysics  is  to 
correct,  qualify,  discredit  its  predecessors.  Its  criticisms 
are  so  convincing  that  we  wonder  how  the  older  theory  ever 
held  its  ground.  The  critic  triumphs  like  a  "strong  man 
armed,"  until  "a  stronger  than  he  shall  come  upon  him  and 
take  from  him  all  his  armour  wherein  he  trusted."  Take 
any  Metaphysical  treatise  which  reviews  the  labours  of  its 
predecessors,  it  matters  not  from  which  sect  or  school,  the 
strength  of  it  lies  in  its  refutation  of  preceding  doctrines. 
Take  any  text-book  on  the  history  of  speculative  philosophy, 


xvi  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

such  as  those  of  Zeller,  Kuno  Fischer,  or  Lewes,  or  such 
excellent  summaries  of  Metaphysics  as  those  in  the  old  and 
new  Encyclopcedia  Britannica,  by  the  former  Master  of 
Balliol  College,  and  by  the  present  President  of  Corpus 
College,  in  Oxford.  Turn  to  the  latest  general  History  of 
Philosophy,  by  Arch.  B.  D.  Alexander,  Glasgow,  1907.  The 
story,  even  in  impartial  hands,  is  one  long  tale  of  error, 
failure,  confusion,  and  uncertainty.  Professor  Case's  essay, 
full  of  learning,  judgment,  acuteness,  as  it  is,  ends  with  a 
hope  that  we  may  "pass  through  the  anarchy  of  modern 
metaphysics,"  and  in  the  future  discover  some  answer  to  the 
great  questions.  With  philosophic  courage,  one  after  an- 
other, the  Metaphysician  walks  up  to  the  Eternal  Sphinx, 
though  he  sees  round  her  the  whitened  bones  of  those  who 
have  gone  before  him.  Why  hope?  Why  ask?  Why  not 
turn  aside  —  to  some  useful  and  less  depressing  search  ? 

It  has  been  well  said  that  Metaphysics  is  "the  prolonged 
impotence  of  two  thousand  years."  Science,  like  other  solid 
achievements  of  the  human  intellect,  advances  from  step  to 
step,  from  generation  to  generation,  ever  building  anew  on 
the  assured  foundation  of  previous  discoveries.  It  does  not 
constantly  hark  back  to  the  earliest  theorems  of  Copernicus, 
Galileo,  or  Harvey.  But  the  Ontologist  and  the  Panlogist 
is  for  starting  afresh  with  the  data  of  Plato,  Descartes,  or 
Spinoza;  and  his  greatest  triumph  is  to  prove  how  all  his 
predecessors  were  wrong.  The  supreme  result  of  two  thou- 
sand years  of  debate  is  stated  in  a  recent  work  to  be  "the 
potentiality  of  self-realisation  eternally  inherent  in  the  world- 
principle."  If  we  do  not  accept  this  dogma,  if  we  even 
confess  that  we  see  no  meaning  in  it,  we  are  told  that  we 
are  old-fashioned  and  not  up  to  the  high  level  of  modern 
thought. 

For  my  part  I  am  so  old-fashioned  as  to  agree  with  Thomas 


INTRODUCTION  xvii 

Carlyle  when  so  long  ago  as  the  year  in  which  I  was  born  he 
wrote :  — 

"  The  disease  of  Metaphysics  is  a  perennial  one."  "  It  is  a 
chronic  malady  that  of  Metaphysics,  and  perpetually  recurs  on 
us."  "  There  is  no  more  fruitless  endeavour  than  this  same,  which 
the  Metaphysician  proper  toils  in:  to  educe  Conviction  out  of 
Negation.  How,  by  merely  testing  and  rejecting  what  is  not,  shall 
we  ever  attain  knowledge  of  what  is?  .  .  .  Consider  it  well,  Meta- 
physics is  the  attempt  of  the  mind  to  rise  above  the  mind;  to  en- 
viron or  shut  in,  or  as  we  may  say,  comprehend  the  mind.  Hope- 
less struggle,  for  the  wisest,  as  for  the  foolishest !  What  strength  of 
sinew,  or  athletic  skill,  will  enable  the  stoutest  athlete  to  fold  his 
own  body  in  his  arms,  and,  by  lifting,  lift  up  himself?  The  Irish 
Saint  swam  the  Channel,  '  carrying  his  head  in  his  teeth  ';  but  the 
feat  has  never  been  imitated." 

I  have  read  in  my  time  whole  libraries  of  metaphysical 
dialectic  —  aye,  and  many  of  the  very  latest,  and  I  think  I 
see  most  of  what  they  mean,  or  ought  to  mean,  and  I  am 
quite  alive  to  their  subtlety  and  their  profundity.  But  I 
cannot  see  that  in  all  these  seventy-six  years  since  Carlyle 
wrote,  they  have  advanced  the  problem  one  inch.  The  stone 
of  Sisyphus  ever  rolls  back  down  the  hill.  Oxford  calls  out 
to  Edinburgh ;  Birmingham  challenges  Harvard ;  and  Glas- 
gow replies  to  Cambridge.  And  one  and  all  appeal  to  Jena, 
Berlin,  Tubingen,  or  Bonn.  Now  the  cry  is  —  "Back  to 
Kant!":  anon  it  is  —  "Hegel  to  the  rescue!":  and  then 
there  comes  to  the  front  Neo-Schopenhauerianism,  or  the 
Pan-Pessimism  of  Nietzsche,  and  the  Pragmatism  of  Signore 
Papini.  The  cry  is  still  they  come  !  and  one  after  another 
they  recede  into  the  distant  background,  like  successive  scenes 
in  a  modern  pageant. 

One  of  the  typical  characters  of  Metaphysics  is  that  they 
are  thought  to  have  "fashions"  like  a  lady's  sleeve  or  a 
dandy's  collar,  and    to  revolve  in  "seasons."     As  in  the 


XVlil  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

modiste's  world  "every  lady  now  wears  electric  blue,"  and 
not  to  wear  electric  blue  is  to  be  dowdy,  so  in  the  Meta- 
physical world  Neo-Hegelianism  becomes  all  the  fashion, 
and  not  to  care  for  Nietzsche  is  to  be  "  Mid- Victorian "  and 
old-fashioned.  A  Privat-docent  from  Jena  or  a  Dr.  Philos. 
of  Chicago  publishes  an  "epoch-making"  book  wherein  the 
"  Unbewusster  Wille"  of  Schopenhauer,  or  the  "Anstoss" 
of  Fichte,  and  the  "Begriff"  and  the  "Idee^'  receive  some 
new  development  —  or  it  might  be  final  annihilation  —  and 
forthwith  the  Metaphysicians  of  Europe  will  listen  to  nothing 
but  the  new  epoch-making  Metaphysic.  Examiners  in  Acad- 
emies and  reviewers  in  periodicals,  who  have  to  be  profes- 
sionally up-to-date,  work  the  new  discovery  into  students 
and  readers.  We  are  all  so  completely  under  the  harrow  of 
Examiners  and  Critics  that  it  requires  some  courage  to  confess 
a  weakness  for  what  was  common  sense  fifty  years  ago.  But 
I  make  bold  to  say  that  nothing  marks  the  tiro  more  than 
silly  conceits  about  "fashion"  in  philosophy. 

If  philosophy  changes  in  each  decade  with  any  text-book 
of  the  day,  with  each  professor  whose  lectures  fill  his  class- 
room, philosophy  would  be  as  frivolous  a  pursuit  as  the  last 
"creation"  of  the  Rue  de  la  Paix.  It  is  not  so  very  much 
that  has  been  permanently  added  to  the  solid  Philosophy  of 
Mind  since  Locke,  Berkeley,  Hume,  Kant,  Fichte,  Hegel. 
All  of  these  established  something  lasting  in  the  bases  of 
general  philosophy,  and  all  of  them  have  since  been  criticised, 
corrected,  and  developed  by  their  successors.  I  have  never 
closed  the  windows  of  my  own  mind  to  later  ideas  —  indeed 
I  have  derived  some  instruction  and  much  amusement  from 
some  of  the  latest.  But  so  far  as  the  problems  of  pure  Meta- 
physics are  concerned,  I  hold  that  the  substantial  truth  of 
the  matter  may  be  found  in  the  works  of  Spencer,  Mansel, 
Mill,  Lewes,  Bain,  and  Comte,  though  I  am  not  prepared  to 


INTRODUCTION  xix 

swear  belief  in  all  that  we  read  in  any  one  of  these.  The 
Professors  and  Masters  of  Britain,  America,  Germany,  and 
Europe  in  general,  do  not  seem  to  me  to  have  shaken  the 
essential  truth  of  the  Philosophy  of  Experience  and  the 
Relative  Synthesis  of  all  human  knowledge;  and  I  am  not 
to  be  frightened  by  the  nickname  of  Mid-Victorian,  or  of 
old-fashioned,  materialist,  and  the  like,  from  saying  again 
what  I  have  held  all  my  life  —  and  hold  still  as  firmly  as 
ever. 

It  would  not  be  of  very  grave  consequence  if  addiction  to 
Metaphysics  stood  by  itself,  and  did  not  affect  religion, 
philosophy,  morality,  and  life.  Those  who  pursue  these 
studies  are  not  so  many,  apart  from  the  demands  of  exami- 
nations, lectures,  and  reviews  of  books.  But  Metaphysics 
do  not  stand  alone.  They  tend  to  take  the  place  of  Revela- 
tion, which  has  been  pronounced  to  be  "old-fashioned." 
Long  years  ago  Carlyle  wrote,  "The  Christian  Religion  of 
late  ages  has  been  continually  dissipating  itself  into  Meta- 
physics ;  and  threatens  now  to  disappear,  as  some  rivers  do, 
in  deserts  and  barren  sand." 

Since  this  terrible  indictment  of  orthodox  creeds  was 
written,  the  process  of  substituting  the  fashionable  Meta- 
physic  of  the  day  for  Revelation,  now  superseded  by  modern 
criticism,  has  gone  on  with  increasing  speed.  The  Scriptural 
dogmas  whereon  the  entire  scheme  of  religious  faith  has  so 
long  been  thought  to  rest  are  quietly  surrendered  by  men 
who  clutch  at  the  nebulous  hypotheses  of  some  "Higher 
Consciousness,"  or  the  "Absolute  as  the  highest  expression 
of  Reality,"  whatever  that  may  mean.  As  any  one  can  put 
upon  cither  of  these  phrases,  and  on  many  similar  phrases, 
any  meaning  that  he  likes,  they  serve  as  proofs  of  "God," 
"Soul,"  "Immortality,"  about  which,  in  the  old  and  real 
sense,  doubts  begin  to  be  harboured. 


XX  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

The  "Higher  Consciousness,"  "the  Absolute,"  "Intui- 
tional Truth,"  since  they  transcend  logic  and  proof,  can  be 
made  to  warrant  anything  that  transcends  positive  know- 
ledge. The  famous  maxim  of  Novalis  — "  Philosophy  [mean- 
ing Metaphysics]  can  bake  no  bread ;  but  it  can  procure  for 
us  God,  Freedom,  and  Immortality"  —  has  proved  a  raft  of 
comfort  to  the  theologian  in  the  shipwreck  of  orthodox 
dogma.  He  throws  overboard  Scripture,  Creeds,  Church, 
and  Catechism,  and  rides  out  the  gale  on  Greek  or  German 
ambiguities.  Metaphysics  do  not  enable  us  to  realise  either 
God,  Freedom,  or  Immortality;  but  they  wrap  them  all  in 
a  transcendental  haze,  and  enable  us  to  fancy  we  do  know 
them.  The  sober  truth  would  be  this.  Metaphysics  can 
bake  no  bread  and  procure  no  food,  physical  or  spiritual; 
but  they  enable  us  to  talk  about  God,  Freedom,  and  Im- 
mortality when  we  have  abandoned  the  ancient  grounds  on 
which  we  used  to  believe  in  them. 

It  has  become,  therefore,  of  prime  importance  to  test  the 
legitimacy  of  Metaphysical  pronouncements,  and  to  have 
clear  convictions  about  the  cardinal  problems  they  pretend 
to  solve.  These  pronouncements  now  take  the  place  of 
Holy  Writ  and  the  truths  committed  to  the  Church  of  Christ. 
Bible  and  Church  being  found  "old-fashioned,"  religion  is 
being  under-pinned  on  transcendental  subHmities  which, 
though  as  old  as  the  Bible,  are  now  furbished  up  with  a  new 
gloss. 

These  are  thought  to  obtain  sovereign  authority  from  the 
support  given  them  by  a  few  specialists  in  Physical  Science. 
Certain  well-known  physicists  have  given  more  or  less  en- 
couragement to  spiritualist  speculations  and  Latter-Day 
Theosophies.  The  illustrious  Michael  Faraday  was  a  Sande- 
manian ;  the  living  rival  of  Charles  Darwin  dabbles  in  Psy- 
chical Research  and  has  published  some  amazing  revelations 


i>rrRODUcriON  xxi 

about  other  worlds.  There  is  nothing  to  prevent  a  chemist 
or  an  electrician  from  being  a  jNIussulman  or  a  Buddhist  in 
religious  belief.  But  his  views  on  general  philosophy  have 
no  higher  value  than  those  of  any  botanist,  or  geometer,  or 
microscopist. 

The  public  has  a  somewhat  credulous  way  of  looking  on 
deserved  reputations  in  physical  research  as  equivalent  to 
philosophic  competence.  It  is  really  very  often  a  disad- 
vantage when  a  specialist  is  called  on  to  face  the  ultimate 
generalisations  of  thought.  In  these  days  of  minute  sub- 
division of  labour,  a  man  like  Dr.  Edison  spends  his  life  in 
a  series  of  intricate  experiments  which  almost  close  his  mind 
from  touching  on  psychological  problems  or  the  canons 
of  demonstration.  Wonderful  discoveries  in  the  world  of 
physics  entitle  such  an  one  to  be  called  a  "man  of  science," 
but  they  certainly  do  not  constitute  him  a  philosopher.  And 
his  opinions  on  the  "Higher  Consciousness"  or  "the  im- 
manence of  God  in  Nature"  have  no  greater  authority  than 
that  of  any  intelligent  man  who  has  found  no  time  to  study 
the  history  of  philosophy  from  Plato  to  Spencer. 

It  is  the  long  and  complex  story  of  the  evolution  of  meta- 
physical speculation  which  is  really  decisive  on  these  prob- 
lems. Almost  any  of  the  thousand  solutions  of  "Absolute 
Being,"  "Ultimate  Consciousness,"  and  the  "World -Princi- 
ple" have  a  fascinating  plausibility  when  stated  with  all  the 
specious  lucidity  of  the  born  metaphysician.  It  is  only 
when  the  trained  student  of  philosophy,  after  long  years  of 
reading  and  meditation,  comes  to  realise  the  eternal  failure 
of  every  attempt,  the  weary  round  in  a  closed  circle  from 
which  the  victim  can  find  no  issue,  and  is  perpetually  brought 
back  to  the  same  familiar  spot  from  which  he  started,  it  is 
only  by  having  traversed  all  the  gloomy  circles  of  the  Inferno 
of  Ontology,  and  so  through  the  terraces  of  the  Purgatory  of 


xxii  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

Intuition,  that  the  mind  finally  issues  in  the  Heaven  of  clear 
vision.  The  only  safe  way  of  reaching  philosophic  clearness 
is  to  have  paced  through  the  secular  stages  in  the  history  of 
general  philosophy.  The  facile  guesses  of  a  specialist  in 
Physics  can  do  nothing  but  "make  that  darker  which  was 
dark  enough  before." 

I  am  speaking  of  general  tendencies  and  not  of  particular 
persons,  schools  of  thought,  or  phases  of  religion.  It  is 
notorious  that  in  the  English-speaking  world,  as  in  Europe 
'generally,  there  are  various  schemes  of  faith  which  treat  the 
orthodox  dogmas  of  all  the  Churches  as  untrustworthy  or 
obsolete,  and  yet  do  find  a  ground  in  sonorous  Metaphysics 
for  as  much  of  Christianity  or  Theism  as  they  think  worth 
preserving.  They  cherish  consolation  in  all  sorts  of  spiritualist 
hypotheses  which  may  mean  anything  and  are  incapable  of 
meeting  positive  refutation.  Pantheism,  Panlogism,  i.e.  the 
Infinite  and  Omnipresent  Mind,  the  Universal  Mind,  the 
Impersonal  Consciousness,  and  the  like  may  be  stretched  to 
explain  anything  and  to  warrant  any  proposition.  That  an 
electrician  or  an  algebraist  has  toyed  with  Spooks  and  Sub- 
liminal Consciousness  is  a  very  poor  title  to  install  him  as  a 
Father  of  the  New  Theosophy.  This  novel  Patristic  Thau- 
maturgy  is  as  purely  imaginary  as  that  of  Origen  or  Chrysos- 
tom.  Their  Materialist  or  Idealist  Book  of  Genesis  is  a  mere 
fairy-tale,  with  no  more  science  in  it  than  the  Pentateuch. 
It  would  be  a  sad  end  for  the  Catholic  Scheme  of  Salvation 
which  has  done  so  much  for  civilisation  and  morality  if  it  has 
to  rest  on  the  Revelation  of  Psychical  Research. 

It  may  be  convenient  if  I  set  down  my  own  reminiscences 
of  how  my  mind  grew  under  these  studies.  At  school  we 
were  familiar  enough  with  some  of  the  shorter  Dialogues  of 
Plato,  and  had  much  to  say  about  Socrates'  last  words  as  he 
drank  the  hemlock  in  prison.     But  it  was  at  Oxford  that  I 


INTRODUCTION  Xxiii 

began  any  serious  study  of  Greek  philosophy.  There  the 
ordinary  courses  involved  a  verj'  close  and  minute  reading 
of  the  principal  books  of  Plato  and  of  Aristotle,  and  a  general 
understanding  of  the  development  of  Greek  philosophy  from 
Thales  to  Proclus  —  those  ten  centuries  before  and  after 
Christ  wherein  the  history  of  speculation  curiously  follows 
the  course  of  modern  Metaphysics  from  Descartes  to  Hegel 
and  Jowett. 

The  essence  of  the  training  at  Oxford  in  my  time  was  the 
exact  analysis  of  the  treatises  of  Plato  and  Aristotle,  sen- 
tence by  sentence,  in  the  original  Greek.  I  believe  this  to 
be  the  most  valuable  scheme  of  philosophical  study  which 
can  be  followed.  I  would  hesitate  to  lay  down  any  opinion 
on  the  use  of  Greek  in  general  education ;  but  I  make  bold 
to  say  that  the  hammering  out  every  shred  of  meaning  in 
the  great  standard  works  of  Aristotle  is  the  most  illuminating 
mode  in  which  the  human  mind  can  be  trained.  To  have 
absorbed  the  cardinal  conceptions  of  the  profoundest  intellect 
ever  given  to  man  is  to  be  securely  launched  on  the  road  to 
living  Truth. 

Like  other  students  I  was,  of  course,  first  interested  in 
Plato,  the  fascination  of  whose  language  reaches  the  highest 
point  ever  attained  in  any  prose.  It  is  always  a  struggle 
with  one  who  loves  fine  literature  to  suffer  the  mcllinuous 
imagination  of  the  Academy  to  be  displaced  by  the  iron- 
bound  good  sense  of  the  Ethics  and  the  Politics.  Equally, 
of  course,  I  took  the  Metaphysical  fever  in  the  usual  youth- 
ful form,  just  as  when  I  thought  I  understood  the  Calculus, 
I  devoted  some  time  to  the  quadrature  of  the  Circle.  My 
tutor  in  Logic  was  a  fervent  believer  in  the  high-and-dry 
Oxford  Dialectic,  and  I  wrote  under  his  guidance  reams  of 
mysterious  disquisitions  about  "Being,"  "Consciousness," 
"Noumcna,"  "Categories,"  and  "The  Absolute."     There  is 


Xxiv  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

a  strange  fascination  in  the  pursuit,  as  to  some  minds  there 
is  in  Chess  Problems  and  the  Chances  of  Rouge  et  Noir. 
But  before  I  quitted  Oxford  I  was  a  confirmed  Aristotelian ; 
and  I  had  learned  to  apply  to  the  Metaphysics  of  Plato,  and 
the  Platonists  old  and  new,  the  conclusive  judgment  of 
Aristotle  in  his  second  book  of  Politics  —  "All  these  dis- 
quisitions have  brilliancy,  originality,  grace,  and  profound 
subtlety  —  but  they  settle  nothing  in  the  end." 

My  understanding  of  the  great  Greek  philosophers  was 
promoted  by  a  diligent  study  of  George  Grote,  Mill,  George 
H.  Lewes,  the  early  essays  of  Spencer,  and  Littre's  analysis 
of  Comte's  Positivism.  I  read  some  Hegel,  and  I  knew 
German  Metaphysics  at  second  hand.  The  modern  Meta- 
physicians I  read,  and  was  often  tempted  by  the  subtleties  of 
J.  H.  Newman,  F.  D.  Maurice,  Mansel,  James  Martineau, 
Jowett,  and  our  modern  Hegelians.  But  all  these  seemed 
to  me  in  the  end  to  discredit  one  another.  Each  would  start 
de  novo,  as  though  nothing  was  really  settled  as  a  basis. 
But  I  found  that  the  thinkers  of  the  schools  of  experience  and 
of  the  relativity  of  all  human  knowledge  held  common 
ground  and  promised  an  intelligible  method  of  advance. 

The  ingenious  term  "Agnostic"  was  not  then  invented, 
and  the  idea  it  connotes  was  not  then  applied  to  religious 
philosophy.  But  it  described  Metaphysics  —  meaning  by 
that  Ontology,  or  the  Essence  of  the  Universe,  Absolute 
Being,  the  Universal  Consciousness,  the  Soul  as  an  im- 
perishable substance,  and  the  unconditioned  Freedom  of  the 
Will  —  all  this  it  was  finally  taught  me  to  regard  as  Unproven 
and  Unprovable.  By  the  time  I  was  thirty  I  had  become 
(metaphysically  speaking)  a  pure  and  confirmed  Agnostic. 

The  whole  of  my  philosophical  reading  was  practically 
guided  by  George  H.  Lewes'  Biographical  History  of  Philoso- 
phy, which  I  have  constantly  used  in  all  its  successive  forms. 


INTRODUCTION  XXV 

In  its  definitive  edition  of  1880  (two  vols.  8vo),  I  believe  it 
to  be  on  the  whole  the  most  illuminating  account  of  the 
progress  of  philosophy  from  Thales  to  Comte  that  exists  in 
our  language.  I  am  quite  aware  of  Lewes'  shortcomings 
both  of  mind  and  of  character,  and  I  know  all  the  shallow 
contempt  which  pedantic  specialists  pour  on  his  works.  But 
he  has  the  immense  advantage  over  them  —  an  advantage 
which  is  partly  shared  with  Mill  and  Spencer  —  that  he 
exhibits  the  very  rare  example  of  a  student  of  Metaphysics 
who  has  a  competent  knowledge  of  more  than  one  of  the 
physical  sciences,  and  thus  he  comes  to  problems  of  Philoso- 
phy with  a  mind  trained  to  a  sense  of  scientific  demonstra- 
tion. In  addition  to  his  biological  and  psychological  studies, 
Lewes  had  a  wide  grasp  of  general  literature  and  at  least  the 
rudiments  of  Sociology.  There  was  a  prejudice  against  him 
owing  to  his  singularly  lucid  style  and  his  brilliant  form. 
Metaphysicians  incline  to  regard  everything  lucid  to  be 
shallow  and  frivolous.  His  literary  instincts  and  his  know- 
ledge of  men  saved  him  from  the  futilities  of  the  adepts  of 
Metaphysics  who  spin  endless  cocoons  of  attenuated  ab- 
stractions which  settle  nothing,  even  if  they  could  be  reduced 
to  sense. 

In  saying  this  I  do  not  mean  to  pledge  myself  to  all  of 
Lewes'  works,  nor  to  the  whole  even  of  his  famous  History. 
He  did  not  at  all  assimilate  Comte's  system,  and  he  very 
imperfectly  represented  it.  I  am  quite  aware  that  in  de- 
fending such  work  as  that  of  Lewes  I  am  open  to  the  charge 
of  being  Mid-Victorian  and  "obsolete,"  as  if  everything 
written  thirty  years  ago  is  necessarily  out-of-date  and  worth- 
less. Books  are  not  like  battleships,  to  become  "obsolete" 
directly  a  foreign  Professor  has  started  a  new  hare  to  be 
hunted.  The  raw  girls  who  do  "original  research"  in  the 
Records  are  told  that  Gibbon  is  "old-fashioned,"  and  the 


XXvi  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON  SENSE 

Tariff  Reformers  on  platforms  tell  working  men  that  Adam. 
Smith  was  an  old  humbug.  But  the  whole  world  has  not 
yet  become  the  prey  of  journalists  or  crammers.  And  we 
want  some  better  authority  than  theirs  that  the  metaphy- 
sicians of  this  generation,  with  all  their  batteries  of  patent 
neologisms  —  in  barbarous  Greek,  such  as  thev  invent  for 
trade  advertisements  —  have  finally  solved  the  abysmal  prob- 
lems left  open  by  Kant  and  Hegel. 

The  fifteen  years  of  study  I  gave  to  the  five  principal 
works  of  Comte,  ending  in  our  Translation  of  the  four  vol- 
umes of  the  Positive  Polity,  1875-6-7,  confirmed  me  as  a 
full  adherent  of  the  Positive  Philosophy.  Without  pretend- 
ing to  be  convinced  by  everything  laid  down  by  Comte,  even 
in  abstract  Philosophy,  the  main  ideas  on  which  these  rest 
satisfy  me  as  proven  for  all  practical  purposes  of  human  life. 
I  limit  myself  to  this  condition  because  the  key  of  the  system 
is  just  this  —  that  no  absolute  certainty,  no  abstract  essence 
of  any  kind  is  possible,  or  could  be  of  any  human  utility  even 
if  it  were  possible.  At  the  same  time  these  m.ain  ideas  of 
Comte  are  almost  wholly  unknown  in  the  original  texts  even 
to  students  of  Philosophy  and  serious  opponents.  And  they 
have  been  so  absurdly  travestied  by  theological  polemists 
and  by  literary  critics  that  it  may  be  useful  to  set  out  some 
of  the  real  Positivist  reasons  for  passing  by  the  assumed 
science  of  Metaphysics  as  an  idle  indulgence  in  dialectical 
gymnastic. 

The  Positive  Philosophy  refuses  to  be  classed  under  any 
of  the  current  titles  by  which  other  schools  seek  to  distinguish 
themselves  or  are  labelled  by  opponents.  It  vehemently 
repudiates  the  name  of  Materialism,  inasmuch  as  it  rejects 
all  physical  explanations  of  human  nature  as  degrading,  and 
insists  on  referring  the  spiritual  nature  of  Man's  soul  to 
spiritual  ideas.     For  similar  reasons  it  repudiates  the  name 


INTRODUCTION  XXVii 

of  Sensationalism,  or  Realism,  or  Experientialism,  for  it  in- 
sists on  the  dominant  power  of  strictly  psychical  forces.  Nor, 
on  the  other  hand,  can  it  be  classed  under  Idealism,  inas- 
much as  it  will  not  admit  any  attempt  to  identify  Thought 
and  Reality,  or  to  regard  Alind  as  the  source  of  the  Real. 

It  is  certainly  not  to  be  grouped  under  any  form  of  Monism, 
inasmuch  as  dual,  or  plural,  elements  contribute  to  every 
truth  or  conception  of  sound  philosophy.  Positivism  con- 
demns all  attempts  at  any  Unification  of  Science,  all  theories 
referring  conceptions  to  any  one  principle  whatever,  all 
schemes  that  would  reduce  the  Sciences  to  one  master-science, 
or  would  derive  our  World  —  much  less  the  Universe  — 
from  any  one  source,  whether  material  or  ideal.  The  domi- 
nant system  of  classification  preferred  by  Comte  is  Dual ; 
he  often  resorts  to  the  trinal,  though  far  from  accepting 
Hegel's  eternal  triads ;  in  fact  Comte  resorts  often  tb  the 
numbers  five,  seven,  and  even  thirteen :  —  perhaps  he  is  in- 
clined to  a  fanciful  use  of  numbers.  But  he  never  inclines 
to  any  type  of  ]Monism. 

The  erroneous  idea  that  Positivism  rests  upon  any  single 
principle  or  idea  was  encouraged  by  Mill's  misunderstanding 
Comte's  use  of  the  word  Unite.  With  Comte,  right  or  wrong, 
unite  means  synthesis  —  not  unity  —  and  the  synthesis  is 
necessarily  dual,  or  more  often  trinal,  in  idea.  With  Comte 
even  Humanity  did  not  stand  alone  as  a  single  object  of 
reverence,  as  a  solitary  source  of  power.  In  his  last  work, 
of  1856,  he  developed  his  theory  of  a  Trinity  of  dominant 
objects  of  human  regard  —  Humanity,  Earth,  and  Space. 
This  conception,  right  or  wrong,  has  been  almost  wholly 
ignored  in  England,  and  seems  to  be  unknown  to  the  critics 
of  Positivism.  But  it  is  conclusive  against  the  idea  that 
Comte's  whole  mind  was  obsessed  by  a  passion  for  Unity. 
For  all  purposes,  both  theoretical  and  practical.  Positivism 


xxviii  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

as  a  system  is  much  rather  Trinitarian  than  it  is  Unitarian 
in  any  sense.  As  Dr.  Bridges  wrote  in  his  masterly  exposure 
of  Mill's  mistaken  criticism  —  "The  repudiation  of  Unity,  in 
the  objective  sense  of  the  word,  is  the  essence  of  Comte's 
Philosophy."  U unite  with  Comte  always  means  harmony, 
co-ordination,  as  Littre  in  his  Dictionary  explains  it  —  un 
caractbre  d'ensemble,  —  and  he  quotes  its  use,  in  that  sense 
of  consistency,  by  Voltaire,  D'Alembert,  and  Marmontel. 
Mill's  error  was  a  simple  case  of  mistranslation. 

A  similar  misunderstanding  led  to  the  current  assertion 
that  Comte  repudiated  Psychology ;  and  the  mistake  of  Mill, 
who  read  the  Politique  Positive  without  due  care,  was  eagerly 
seized  upon  by  Huxley,  who  did  not  read  the  book  at  all. 
What  Comte  repudiated  was  not  Psychology,  or  the  laws  of 
Mind,  but  Psychologic  —  by  which  he  meant  the  introspective 
metliod  of  observing  one's  own  intuitions  as  taught  about 
1830  by  Victor  Cousin  and  his  school.  This  was  a  totally 
different  thing  from  true  Psychology,  and  was  rejected  alike 
by  Mill,  Spencer,  Lewes,  Huxley,  and  all  modern  psychol- 
ogists. When  Comte  was  composing  his  treatises  about 
seventy  years  ago,  the  term  "Psychologic"  in  France  meant 
the  fashionable  Idealist  Theosophy.  It  was  this  which 
Comte  repudiated  —  not  the  Laws  of  Mind  in  the  true 
sense. 

It  may  be  that  Comte  too  rigidly  excluded  the  rational  use 
of  self-introspection  —  of  which  indeed  he  made  frequent 
employment  by  way  of  memory  in  his  own  meditations. 
He  perhaps  overrated  the  difficulty  of  scientific  Introspec- 
tion, so  well  stated  by  Spencer  as  this  —  "The  mere  act  of 
observing  the  current  phenomena  of  consciousness  introduces 
a  new  element  into  consciousness  which  tends  to  disturb  the 
processes  going  on.  The  observations  should  be  oblique 
rather  than  direct;    should  be  made  not  during  but  im- 


INTRODUCTION  xxix 

mediately  after  the  appropriate  experiences."  This  is  really 
to  repudiate  any  real,  i.e.  direct,  use  of  Introspection,  as  also 
did  Hume;  and  so  far  both  Hume  and  Spencer  agree  with 
Comte.  For  my  own.  part,  after  careful  study  of  Spencer's 
Psychology  (1870)  and  of  G.  H.  Lewes'  Psychology  (1879), 
I  am  inclined  to  accept  their  general  analyses  as  sufficient, 
and  in  any  case  these  seem  to  me  to  be  only  modifications  of 
Comte's  position,  that  Psychology  as  a  study  must  be  treated 
with  dependence  on  Biology  and  in  succession  to  Biology, 
but  really  developed  by  Sociology. 

WTiat  Comte  did  was  to  repudiate  Intuitional  Introspec- 
tion as  a  treacherous  instrument,  and  to  refuse  to  make  Psy- 
chology a  separate  and  independent  science.  In  declining 
to  treat  Psychology  as  a  separate  science  he  followed  his 
general  principle  —  one  most  true  as  well  as  illuminating  — 
that  a  branch  of  study  which  combined  resort  to  different 
sciences  should  be  regarded  as  a  concrete  and  mixed,  not  an 
abstract  and  simple  form  of  research.  Geology,  resorting  to 
Astronomy,  Physics',  Biology  alternately,  is  not  a  pure  science. 
Economics,  for  the  same  reason,  resorting  as  it  does  to  biol- 
ogy, geography,  mechanics,  sociology,  history,  politics,  and 
morals,  is  not  a  distinct  science,  but  a  branch  of  Sociology. 
Comte  altogether  only  admitted  seven  distmct  sciences,  from 
Mathematics  to  Morals,  as  being  distinct  in  method  and 
data.  Other  branches  of  science  were  to  be  classified  under 
some  of  these  seven.  But  all  this  is  a  question  of  classifica- 
tion, of  order  of  study,  not  of  substantial  philosophy. 

It  is  now  a  stale  jest  to  tell  the  world  that  Positivism  re- 
pudiates the  study  of  Psychology.  If  by  Psychology  is  meant 
the  study  of  the  laws  of  Mind,  the  analysis,  by  every  avail- 
able means,  of  the  moral  and  intellectual  functions  of  man, 
Positivism  is  pre-eminently  concerned  with  Psychology. 
The  trite  sneer  arose  from  misunderstanding  a  French  word, 


XXX  PHILOSOPHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

and  then  misunderstanding  a  very  plain  and  highly  scientific 
doctrine  of  philosophy.  For  forty  years  past  Dr.  Bridges, 
Professor  Beesly,  Professor  Ingram,  myself,  and  other  Posi- 
tivists  at  home  and  abroad,  have  insisted  that  "all  the  facts 
of  the  human  will,  of  Consciousness,  of  the  Imagination,  of 
Conscience  —  all  the  laws  of  man's  moral  and  intellectual 
nature,  ascertainable  by  human  observation  and  meditation, 
are  in  a  special  degree  the  subject-matter  of  Positivism." 
Although  Comte  did  not  write  any  special  treatise  on  Psy- 
chology, he  treated  it  continually  through  all  his  principal 
works  in  its  due  place;  and,  in  fact,  he  wrote  a  great  deal 
more  about  the  laws  of  Mind  than  some  of  his  critics.  It 
would  be  as  reasonable  to  tell  us  that  Adam  Smith  repudiated 
Political  Economy  on  the  ground  that  the  Wealth  of  Nations 
interfuses  Plutonomy  with  much  that  is  Pohtics,  History, 
Social  Statics,  and  Dynamics. 

Another  charge,  arising  out  of  a  verbal  misconception,  is 
that  Positivism  is  a  "Phenomenal"  system,  resting  on  mere 
"sensationalism,"  and  consequently  a  form  of  materiahsm. 
In  modern  philosophy  since  the  time  of  Hume,  the  term 
phenomenon  describes  anything  of  which  the  mind  can  take 
cognisance,  which  we  perceive,  meditate  on,  are  conscious  of, 
or  reason  on.  In  common  with  all  modern  philosophers, 
Positivists  often  employ  this  generic  term  to  mean  the  data 
of  observation  and  meditation,  whether  presented  to  the 
senses  or  recalled  by  association,  and  forming  the  material 
of  thought.  By  a  device  familiar  to  the  pulpit  and  to  the 
platform,  but  unworthy  of  philosophy,  an  eminent  Meta- 
physician has  sought  to  label  Positivism  as  mere  materialism. 
Years  ago  we  replied  that  Positivism  embraces  as  its  subject- 
matter  "all  things  of  which  any  thinking  and  sentient  being 
is  conscious.  All  facts  of  consciousness,  all  mental  impres- 
sions and  ideas  of  any  kind  are  just  as  much  its  subject- 


INTRODUCTION  XXxi 

matter  as  they  are  that  of  any  theologian  and  metaphysician." 
"It  excludes  nothing  cognisable  or  even  recognisable  by  the 
brain;  it  does  not  shut  out  any  hypothesis."  "All  things 
thinkable  are  the  common  subject  of  the  Positivist  and  the 
Metaphysician.  The  difference  lies  in  their  different  canons 
of  proof  and  methods  of  reasoning." 

A  great  deal  is  said  by  modem  Metaphysicians  who  insist 
on  apportioning  the  intellectual  element,  not  only  in  the  use 
made  by  the  brain  of  the  observations  presented  to  the  senses, 
but  also  in  the  act  of  sensation  itself.  They  show  that  there 
can  be  no  perception  of  anything  external  without  some  kind 
of  mental  element  concurring  in  it.  This  was  emphatically 
the  view  of  Comte,  who  insists  that  the  very  smallest  sensa- 
tion is  ineffective  without  combination  with  Mind.  And  he 
formulates  the  dual  nature  of  every  external  impression  in 
his  reiterated  dogma  that  "all  laws  of  nature  are  constructed 
by  our  minds  out  of  materials  drawn  from  without."  All 
our  conceptions  about  Nature,  he  adds,  are  "the  product  of 
a  collaboration  between  the  World  without  and  the  Mind 
within  us."  And  this  applied  to  all  our  ideas  of  every  kind. 
They  all  result  from  mental  powers  dealing  with  external 
sensations. 

But  sound  Philosophy  makes  no  attempt  exactly  to  appor- 
tion the  relative  amount  of  objective  and  subjective  elements, 
nor  does  it  expect  ever  to  arrive  at  any  absolute  analysis  of 
either  element.  Comte  adopts  "the  maxim  of  Aristotle  as 
corrected  by  Leibnitz"  —  7iihil  est  in  inlellectu  quod  non 
fuerit  in  sensu,  nisi  ipse  intellectus.  But  he  repudiates  as 
idle  all  attempts  to  apportion  the  subjective  and  the  objective 
elements  in  the  combined  process.  Organic  sensation  of 
some  kind,  in  some  degree,  cannot  be  eliminated  from  any 
conception  whatever.  But  this  is  a  very  different  thing  from 
the  materialism  of  Condillac  that  "the  brain  secretes  thought," 


XXxii  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

and  similar  theories  which  would  make  Thought  a  bare 
process  of  the  physical  organs.  And  it  is  a  different  thing 
from  the  Neo-Hegelianism  which  would  make  the  objective 
Universe  coincide  with  subjective  Mind. 

To  sum  up  the  cardinal  principles  of  the  Philosophy  which 
this  volume  is  intended  to  illustrate,  they  are  these.  The 
name  Positive  in  the  language  of  Comte  means  real,  useful, 
certain,  precise,  organic,  relative,  and  sympathetic.  In  other 
words,  it  is  based  on  demonstrable  knowledge  of  certain 
truths  and  works  under  right  feeling  to  guide  active  life. 
It  combines  Intellect,  Affection,  and  Energy,  having  as  its 
constant  end  the  improvement  of  man's  life  as  a  socia^  being 
on  this  earth. 

It  consequently  belongs  to  the  philosophy  based  on  Experi- 
ence, Association,  Observation  of  facts  physical,  intellectual, 
and  moral,  which  since  the  time  of  Hume  has  filled  so  large 
and  fertile  a  ground  in  modern  Thought.  It  starts  with 
fundamental  axioms  such  as  the  universal  Reign  of  Law,  the 
Relativity  of  knowledge,  and  the  conception  of  Evolution, 
which  are  the  groundwork  of  all  that  is  most  dominant  in 
modem  Science.  All  of  this  is  common  ground  with  Posi- 
tivism and  so  many  schools  of  European  philosophy. 

1.  The  fundamental  dogma  of  science  and  of  philosophy 
is  this:  "All  facts  of  observation  whatever,  organic  or  in- 
organic, physical  or  moral,  individual  or  social,  are  always 
subject  to  strictly  invariable  law."  This  doctrine  is  so  famil- 
iar to  all  who  follow  the  trend  of  modem  thought,  and  it  is 
so  widely  accepted  both  in  theory  and  in  practice,  that  it 
need  not  be  further  discussed. 

2.  All  knowledge  is  based  upon  observation  of  facts, 
whether  derived  directly  through  the  senses  or  obtained  by 
reflection  from  antecedent  impressions.  But,  inasmuch  as 
these  are  all  derived  from  the  compound  human  organism, 


INTRODUCTION  XXxiii 

all  man's  knowledge  must  be  limited  more  or  less  by  the  com- 
pound faculties  of  the  organism  and  by  the  conditions  under 
which  they  work.  In  ultimate  resort,  sensation,  though  not 
the  direct  or  sole  source  of  knowledge  and  of  ideas,  cannot  be 
ehminated  as  contributing  to  everything  we  know  or  conceive. 
It  follows  from  the  preceding  laws,  that  all  our  know- 
ledge must  be  relative,  not  absolute.  That  is  to  say,  it  can- 
not transcend  the  human  faculties,  physical,  moral,  and  men- 
tal, plus  the  physical  and  social  conditions  wherein  these 
faculties  operate.  The  Relativity  of  knowledge,  indeed  of 
truth,  morality,  and  life  in  general,  has  been  carried  further 
by  Comte  than  by  Hamilton,  Mansel,  Mill,  Spencer,  or  any 
other  philosopher.  Comte's  epigram  is  this  —  Everything  is 
relative  —  not  absolute,  unless  it  be  this  axiom  itself. 

3.  All  observation,  whether  in  the  material,  moral,  or 
social  worlds,  manifests  a  continuous  development  which, 
in  modem  phraseology,  is  known  as  Evolution.  Positive 
philosophy  adopts  in  the  fullest  sense  the  doctrine  of  Evolu- 
tion in  all  things  terrestrial,  whilst  declining  to  accept  monis- 
tic hypotheses  about  a  Cosmogony  of  the  Universe,  and  pre- 
mature hypotheses  about  vital  and  animal  transformism. 
But  it  applies  the  law  of  continuous  Evolution,  on  demon- 
strable evidence,  to  all  known  phenomena  of  the  physical 
world,  to  human  nature,  and  above  all  to  social,  moral, 
intellectual,  and  religious  Progress.  Comte's  famous  apo- 
thegm is  Progress  is  the  development  of  Order.  By  this  is 
meant  —  all  true  and  efTective  advance  and  improvement  is 
the  resultant  of  elements  previously  co-ordinated  and  capable 
of  growth.  Everything  wc  know  in  Nature,  in  Man,  and  in 
Society,  is  evolved  out  of  antecedent  elements  —  but  is  neither 
transformed  into  new  elements  —  nor  does  it  ever  arise  spon- 
taneously, unprepared,  or  de  novo. 

4.  The  laws  of  the  human  Mind  cannot  be  framed  by 


xxxiv  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

any  process  of  Self-introspection  and  must  be  grounded  on 
a  study  of  the  nervous  organism  generally.  Rational  Psy- 
chology is  so  far  dependent  on  Biology,  and  cannot  be  com- 
pleted without  the  study  of  the  Social  Organism.  All  at- 
tempts of  Metaphysicians  to  form  an  independent  science  of 
Psychology  by  "interrogating  the  consciousness"  of  the  indi- 
vidual thinker  are  futile  and  misleading. 

5.  The  evolution  of  human  Society  in  all  its  aspects  is  as 
much  due  to  intelligible  law  as  is  that  of  the  living  and  ma- 
terial world.  The  study  of  the  Social  Organism  accordingly 
forms  a  true  science  which  is  known  to  European  thinkers 
as  Sociology  —  the  admirable  name  invented  by  Comte  in 
1839.  This  science  from  its  infinitely  greater  complexity  is 
far  less  capable  of  exact  determination  than  any  of  the 
physical  sciences  of  Nature  and  Life.  But  its  elementary 
conditions  and  logic  are  already  sufficiently  ascertained. 
Comte  never  claimed  more  than  to  have  instituted  this 
science,  without  having  constituted  it  as  a  whole.  And  no 
European  thinker  of  importance  treats  it  as  having  attained 
more  than  a  rudimentary  plan. 

These  five  propositions  are,  in  a  general  sense,  common 
ground  with  all  the  schools  of  the  philosophy  of  Experience  and 
are  familiar  to  the  students  of  Mill,  Buckle,  Bain,  Spencer,  and 
Lewes,  and  many  modem  philosophers  at  home  and  abroad. 

I  now  pass  to  summarise  the  cardinal  points  in  the  Posi- 
tive Philosophy  which  are  specially  due  to  Auguste  Comte 
and  which  this  volume  is  intended  to  illustrate. 

6.  The  entire  scheme  of  Sociology  —  considered  not  as  a 
possible  science,  or  as  positing  a  few  general  doctrines,  but 
as  the  crown  and  development  of  all  the  natural  Sciences 
that  precede  it ;  distinctly  and  definitively  instituted  in  ground 
plan  and  dominant  method,  but  far  from  constituted  in  com- 
pleteness or  in  detail.     This  new  science,  now  accepted  by  a 


INTRODUCTION  XXXV 

second  and  third  generation  of  European  thinkers,  is  described 
in  the  four  volumes  of  the  Positive  Polity,  Paris,  1 851 -1854; 
English  translation,  London,  1875-1877.  It  forms  the  basis  of 
the  Science  of  Morals,  and  of  the  Religion  of  Humanity. 

7.  The  law  of  the  Three  States  of  intellectual  progress, 
i.e.  that  all  our  knowledge  begins  by  supposing  fictitious 
explanations,  then  refers  facts  to  hypothetical  ''principles,'' 
and  ultimately  rests  in  scientific  or  positive  proofs.  This 
law  has  been  enthusiastically  approved  by  Mill,  Littre, 
Lewes,  and  many  other  thinkers.  It  is  fully  discussed  in  the 
twelfth  Essay  in  this  volume. 

8.  The  Classification  of  the  seven  Sciences  in  the  order 
of  their  increasing  complexity  of  matter  and  decreasing 
generality  of  range.  They  are  Mathematics,  Astronomy, 
Physics,  Chemistry,  Biology,  Sociology,  Morals.  All  admit 
numerous  subdivisions;  but  no  one  of  these  seven  can  be 
included  in,  or  explained  by,  any  other.  Each  science,  in 
the  order  named,  leads  up  to  and  forms  the  indispensable 
basis  of  the  next  above  it.  All  of  these  are  regarded  as 
abstract  —  not  as  concrete  —  schemes  of  knowledge.  That  is 
to  say,  these  are  Sciences  stating  the  laws  of  independent 
orders  of  phenomena,  whilst  concrete  sciences  treat  of  things 
in  practical  application  and  in  variable  combinations.  A 
complete  classification  of  concrete  science  from  its  complexity 
would  be  an  impracticable  undertaking.  Comtc's  Classifica- 
tion of  the  Sciences  has  been  vigorously  defended  by  Mill, 
Littr6,  Lewes,  L^vy-Bruhl,  Dr.  Ingram,  and  others. 

9.  The  Philosophy  of  History  —  a  summary  sketch  of 
human  civilisation  from  prehistoric  times  to  the  nineteenth 
century.  This  is  contained  in  the  third  volume  of  the  Poli- 
tique Positive,  1853,  pp.  625.  It  has  had  no  rival  but  that 
of  Hegel,  which  few  unless  Hegelians  can  accept  as  a  sub- 
stantive explanation  of  the  historic  record.     Comte's  view  of 


xxxvi  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

general   history   has   been    in   general   terms   adopted   and 
warmly  defended  by  Mill. 

10.  Psychology,  considered  not  as  an  abstract  science 
capable  of  being  systematised  independently  as  the  Laws  of 
Thought,  but  as  closely  bound  up  with  the  Physical  science 
of  Biology,  both  animal  and  human,  and  as  being  largely 
dependent  on  Sociology,  and  explicable  only  by  social  anal- 
ogies and  evidence.  There  is  no  separable  science  of  the 
human  Mind,  for  intellectual  processes  of  all  kinds  are  in- 
extricably mingled  with  emotions  and  active  impulses,  and 
are  to  be  duly  studied  by  the  aid  of  a  multitude  of  biologic 
facts  and  also  by  the  data  of  social  science. 

11.  Philosophy,  in  accordance  with  the  immortal  dictum 
of  Aristotle,  is  no  bare  scheme  of  intellectual  doctrines,  but 
is  legitimate  only  as  it  aims  at  guiding  and  modifying  human 
life.  Man  is  not  a  thinking  machine,  but  a  compound  organ- 
ism wherein  intelligence,  feeling,  and  activity  are  continually 
working  in  concert,  and  wherein  these  elements  can  only  be 
distinguished  apart,  temporarily  and  in  the  abstract.  Philos- 
ophy cannot  be  detached  from  morality,  society,  and  religion. 
All  of  these  imply  philosophy  and  ultimately  rest  upon  it. 

12.  Religion  is  the  definitive  harmony  of  intelligence,  feel- 
ing, and  activity  co-operating  to  an  ideal  perfection  of  hu- 
man well-being,  and  satisfying  all  three  sides  of  human 
nature  by  a  Creed,  a  Discipline,  and  a  Cult  —  which  do  not 
conflict  with  each  other,  but  stimulate  and  modify  each  other. 

13.  As  man's  intellect  can  find  rest  only  in  realities,  not  in 
dreams,  as  man's  feelings  crave  for  a  larger  humanity,  not 
an  anti-human  exclusiveness,  as  man's  activity  imperiously 
thirsts  for  a  development  of  his  earthly  life  —  the  harmony 
of  intellect,  feeling,  and  activity  can  be  realised  only  by 
devotion  to  the  practically  perpetual,  and  relatively  great 
being  —  the  organism  of  Humanity. 


ON    THE    SUPPOSED    NECESSITY    OF    CERTAIN 
METAPHYSICAL    PROBLEMS 

The  questions  which  the  mind  sets  itself  to  solve  are  deter- 
mined from  time  to  time  by  the  mental  habit,  as  a  whole;  and 
there  are  no  special  questions  which  the  mind  is  naturally 
forced  to  consider,  or  which  it  is  unable  to  ignore. 

In  the  awful  portal  of  ISIetaphysics,  vestibulum  ante  ipsum, 
it  is  said  there  sits,  and  will  for  ever  sit,  an  immovable  Sphinx, 
eternally  propounding  to  all  who  would  enter  a  problem, 
which  all  must  attempt  to  solve,  but  which  none  will  ever 
untie.  The  answers  ever  vary;  yet  all  are  wrong.  Those 
who,  weary  of  a  monotonous  a^nigma,  would  pass  on  without 
attempting  a  solution,  are  warned  that  the  answer  is  one 
which,  if  never  found,  is  bound  to  be  for  ever  sought.  They 
are  told  that  there  is  a  special  question  —  perhaps  three  or 
four  questions  —  which  the  mind,  of  its  own  nature,  is  com- 
pelled to  ask,  however  little  expectation  it  may  have  of  obtain- 
ing an  answer. 

There  are,  it  is  said,  certain  ultimate  problems  in  meta- 
physics, such  as  these  —  whence  the  origin  of  things,  of 
what  sort  is  the  personal  government  of  the  universe,  the 
incorporeal  personality  of  the  human  animal,  its  prolonga- 
tion after  death ;  in  other  words,  the  creation,  God,  the  soul, 
and  a  future  state  —  these  and  some  similar  problems, 
though  ever  shifting  their  solutions,  are  eternally  destined  to 
be  asked.     They  have  been  discussed,  it  is  true,  by  various 

B  I 


2  PHILOSOPHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

portions  of  the  human  race  during  long  epochs  of  history, 
not  only  without  anything  like  agreement,  but  with  the  most 
amazing  discord.  A  portion  of  the  population  of  Europe 
is  still  discussing  them ;  and  yet  perhaps  there  has  never 
been  a  period  in  which  the  chaos  of  thought  on  this  subject 
has  been  more  profound.  To  those  who  apply  the  tests 
which  suffice  for  daily  life  there  is  not  one  fixed  point,  not 
a  scrap  of  common  ground  amongst  the  disputants.  The 
followers  of  various  sects,  and  they  can  scarcely  be  counted, 
all  differ  among  themselves;  and  even  the  authorities 
in  each  sect  differ  among  each  other. 

Within  the  Church  of  England,  for  instance,  conceptions 
of  God  as  different  as  those  of  Dean  Mansel  and  Mr.  Jowett 
carry  on  internecine  war.  The  sects  of  metaphysical  phi- 
losophers are  as  little  agreed  in  their  answers.  And  Hegelians 
and  Hamiltonians  reproduce  the  same  metaphysical-theo- 
logical phantasmagoria.  There  is  this  great  difference  be- 
tween this  branch  of  mental  activity  and  that  immediately 
concerned  with  material,  social,  or  logical  progress.  The 
discussion  never  advances.  Nothing  is  ever  established  as  a 
fixed  foundation,  on  which  all  can  proceed  to  build.  Every 
thinker  starts  de  novo.  He  does  not  even  accept  another 
man's  bricks,  wherewith  to  make  his  walls :  nor  does  he 
raise  them  on  another's  ground-plan.  He  must  make  his 
own  bricks,  with  or  without  straw,  precisely  as  he  chooses; 
design  his  edifice  according  to  his  personal  fancy ;  and  for  a 
site  he  has  the  wide  world  to  choose  from,  and  even  the  air. 
It  seems  in  truth  to  be  the  note  of  a  really  superior  meta- 
physician in  this  field  that  he  should  begin  with  a  tabula  rasa, 
and  then  evolve  his  definitions,  his  postulates,  his  axioms, 
his  method,  his  language,  for  himself;  and  perhaps  after 
many  centuries,  there  never  was  a  moment  when  conscientious 
theologians  and  metaphysicians  were  so  little  inclined  as  they 


NECESSITY   OF  METAPHYSICS  3 

are  now  to  accept  these  essential  instruments  from  one  an- 
other, or  from  anybody. 

Nothing  can  be  in  more  direct  contrast  with  the  course 
taken  by  Science.  The  knowledge  slowly  won  by  man  over 
nature  and  her  laws  is  progressive.  The  torch  is  really 
carried  on  from  age  to  age,  lighting  as  it  passes.  In  astron- 
omy, physics,  physiology,  inquiries  lead  to  solutions  which 
are  universally  accepted;  masses  of  subjects  pass  from  the 
sphere  of  problems  and  enter  into  that  of  laws ;  and  in  turn 
they  form  the  basis  from  which  fresh  problems  are  sought  and 
solved.  Problems  which  yield  no  fruit  are  abandoned. 
The  trained  mind  acquires  a  sense  of  tact  which  directs  it  to 
the  subjects  which  are  most  likely  to  yield  fruit,  and  of  which 
its  successors  are  most  likely  to  be  in  need.  There  is  no  single 
instance  of  this  filiation  of  truth  in  the  whole  theological 
department  of  metaphysics.  There  is  here  no  torch  handed 
on.  We  see  only  rockets  which  whiz  into  the  sky,  crackle, 
and  go  out,  and  all  is  as  dark  as  it  was  before,  till  a  fresh 
rocket  lights  the  gloom,  dazzles  us,  —  and  drops. 

The  direct  study  of  man's  moral,  social,  and  intellectual 
nature,  it  is  true,  can  show  far  less  of  solid  and  common 
ground,  and  far  less  transmission  of  results,  than  does  physi- 
cal science.  But  that  is,  unfortunately,  only  because  it  is 
less  scientific  in  its  method.  Still  at  the  worst,  there  are  large 
groups  of  discoveries  in  mental,  moral,  and  social  science, 
which  are  for  every  practical  purpose  common  axioms,  data 
for  fresh  inquiry.  For  an  example,  let  us  take  Mr.  Mill's 
two  works  on  Logic  and  Political  Economy.  A  good  many 
of  his  doctrines,  both  in  mental  and  social  science,  may  fairly 
be  said  to  be  adhuc  sub  jiidice,  but  a  very  large  proportion 
of  them  are  collected  from  previous  thinkers,  and  arc  in 
ordinary  use  as  common  ground.  The  same  thing  is  true  of 
the  work  of  Darwin,  Herbert  Spencer,  Harnack,  and  Rcnan. 


4  PHILOSOPHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

There  are,  again,  groups  of  notions  as  to  the  general 
course  of  human  development  and  historical  progress  which 
are  also  the  common  material  of  social  science  in  every  school. 
The  progress  here  is  far  less  accentuated  than  it  is  in  physical 
science ;  but  there  is  real  progress.  There  is  a  transmission 
of  results,  and  large  common  data.  No  one,  for  instance, 
would  be  listened  to  who  said  that  the  human  race  as  a 
whole  was  standing  still,  or  was  going  back ;  whereas,  on  the 
subject  of  Creation,  for  instance,  any  conceivable  proposition 
would  find  hearers;  and  none  would  surprise  any  one. 
There  is  not  a  single  axiom  on  the  topic  which  can  guide,  or 
need  trammel  any  one.  The  assertor  is  as  free  as  air;  and 
so  of  course  is  his  successor. 

Whence  this  striking  difference  between  theologico-meta- 
physical  and  positive  scientific  labours?  In  science,  if  a 
problem,  after  centuries  of  study,  yields  no  solid  ground,  it  is 
silently  abandoned  as  an  unprofitable  mine.  No  scientific 
inquirer  dreams  of  starting  de  novo,  and  where  he  gets  no 
answers,  he  ceases  to  put  questions.  There  are,  however, 
certain  religious  or  metaphysical  problems  where  the  in- 
quirer contentedly  accepts  the  part  of  Sisyphus.  He  toils 
with  his  stone  up  the  hill,  heaving  it  over  every  obstacle, 
and  perfectly  conscious  that  it  is  destined  to  roll  down  when 
it  reaches  the  top.  His  greatness  appears  to  consist  in  the 
philosophy  with  which  he  accepts  the  inevitable  result  of 
his  labours.  He  works  alone,  accepting  no  help,  trans- 
mitting no  result.  He  has  fellow-toilers,  but  no  fellow-work- 
men. Those  around  him  are  Tantali  and  Danaids,  grasp- 
ing the  impalpable,  shaping  the  formless.  Quisque  sues 
patimur  manes.  But  we  do  not  work  in  concert.  This  is 
not  what  we  call  thought  and  action  in  the  living  world, 
where  labour  is  really  associated,  and  appears  to  be  attended 
with  results. 


NECESSITY   OF  METAPHYSICS  5 

There  is,  however,  a  thought  which  excludes  despair,  even 
in  those  inquirers  who  are  most  conscious  of  failure  of  per- 
manent success.  We  are  continually  assured  that  these  ulti- 
mate mysteries  differ  in  kind  from  the  problems  of  science. 
In  science,  it  seems  that  we  are  under  no  necessity  to  pursue 
any  inquiry  in  which  we  reach  no  hard  bottom.  If  we  see  no 
reasonable  prospect  of  an  answer,  we  are  not  forced  to  put 
the  question.  We  are  not  in  science  set  to  certain  problems 
as  to  a  Rhadamanthine  task.  Whereas,  they  say  the  human 
mind  is  so  constituted  that,  in  metaphysics,  whether  it  finds 
a  solution  or  not,  it  is  still  impelled  to  busy  itself  with  these 
particular  problems. 

We  often  hear  that  it  is  a  part  of  our  mental  system ;  that 
we  are  not  free  agents  in  the  matter.  We  are  said  to  have 
implanted  in  us  an  everlasting  query,  or  a  half-dozen  of 
everlasting  queries;  we  experience  a  sublime  curiosity  on  two 
or  three  topics  —  a  divine  longing  to  solve  a  group  of  sacred 
riddles.  This  hope  springs,  they  say,  immortal  in  the  human 
breast,  insatiable,  if  unsatisfied.  These  alone  of  all  others, 
they  say,  cry  aloud  in  every  human  being  that  has  not  a 
diseased  mind  or  a  depraved  nature.  It  may  be,  they  argue, 
that  no  particular  answer  brings  satisfaction,  but  can  you 
exclude  the  craving  to  ask?  It  is  often  summed  up  in  the 
words  of  the  vulgarest  of  all  the  strong  minds  —  "It  is  all 
very  well,  gentlemen,  but  who  made  all  those  stars?"  Thus 
failure  teaches  no  lesson,  and  breeds  no  despair.  For  if 
each  solution  is  destroyed,  the  problem  is  indestructible. 
Indeed,  a  great  philosopher  has  tried  to  make  the  Unknow- 
able the  basis  or  perhaps  the  apex  of  Philosophy,  the  object 
and  sustenance  of  the  religious  sentiment.  All  altars  are  to  be 
destroyed  save  that  which  is  raised  "to  the  Unknown  God." 

The  result  is  that  scientific  thought  and  social  activity 
are  alike  clogged  by  a  vague,  debilitating  dream.     When  it 


6  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

is  put  into  distinct  words,  which  it  seldom  is,  it  amounts  to 
this.  The  mind  of  man,  they  say,  innately  craves  an  answer 
to  these  questions  —  Of  what  sort  is  the  Being  that  has 
created  this  universe  ?  —  of  what  kind  shall  be  the  future 
of  the  Soul  after  death  ?  These,  they  urge,  are  the  paramount 
questions  which  men  never  can  ignore.  No  philosophy,  no 
system  of  life,  is  worthy  an  hour's  attention,  unless  it  start 
with  these  the  primary  perennial  problems  of  the  human  soul. 
To  this  I  venture  to  oppose  the  following  propositions :  — 

1.  These  questions  are  not  innate  in  the  mind.  On  the 
contrary,  they  are  artificial,  and  result  from  peculiar  habits 
of  mind;  and,  in  fact,  they  cannot  be  traced  in  some  of  the 
most  remarkable  groups  and  races  of  mankind,  nor  in  some 
of  the  most  powerful  minds. 

2.  These  particular  questions  do  not  differ  in  kind  from 
many  theologico-metaphysical  questions  which  have  been 
often  agitated. 

3.  Many  of  such  long-forgotten  questions  have  appeared 
to  various  groups  of  mankind  of  transcendent  importance, 
and  have  occupied  in  their  minds  a  larger  space  than  do  any 
such  problems  in  ours. 

4.  But  all  of  these  questions,  once  of  primary  interest, 
have  disappeared  silently  under  a  changed  current  in  general 
philosophy. 

5.  The  mind,  however,  will  continue  to  be  agitated  by 
a  succession  of  useless  problems,  even  after  they  have  been 
recognised  as  insoluble,  until  its  activity  is  permanently  in- 
spired by  an  overpowering  social  emotion. 

In  spite,  therefore,  of  the  hypotheses  of  so  many  meta- 
physicians, and  the  dogmas  of  so  many  theologians,  I  am 
fain  to  believe  that  these  particular  questions  are  not  in- 
digenous in  the  human  mind.  I  make  bold  to  say  that  the 
natural  mind  is  as  well  able  to  ignore  them  as  it  is  to  ignore 


NECESSITY   OF   METAPHYSICS  7 

other  questions.  I  certainly  deny  that  any  particular  answer 
is  innate,  and  I  doubt  if  the  questions  are  more  innate  than 
the  answers.  I  incline  to  think  the  human  mind  was  not 
sent  into  the  world  with  an  irrepressible  mania  for  putting 
half-a-dozen  particular  riddles,  of  asking  a  set  of  questions 
which  never  get  answered.  I  believe  the  mind  to  have  an 
immense  curiosity  after  an  infinite  number  of  problems. 
What  these  problems  may  be  from  time  to  time  depends  upon 
the  natural  and  acquired  bent  of  the  mind.  I  can  conceive 
no  radical  difference  in  kind  between  the  problems  mentioned 
in  the  outset  and  many  other  problems  which  could  be  sug- 
gested. The  particular  questions  which  the  mind  puts  for 
solution  are  not  instinctive,  but  artificial.  That  is  to  say, 
they  depend  on  the  general  diathesis  of  each  mind,  which 
depends  partly  on  its  special  quality  and  cultivation,  and 
partly  on  the  social  influences  around  it.  The  paramount 
importance  of  any  given  problem  is  determined  for  each  mind 
by  the  mental  habit  as  a  whole.  Where  we  see  a  particular 
problem  occupying  this  paramount  importance  in  any  given 
age  or  race,  it  only  proves  the  prevalence  of  some  particular 
habit  of  mind.  What  I  deny  is  that  the  history  of  the  human 
race  shows  any  particular  problem  uniformly  holding  the  domi- 
nant place.  And  certainly  I  would  say  this  of  the  particular 
problems  now  under  discussion.  I  can  draw  no  solid  distinction 
between  them  and  many  other  objects  of  mental  curiosity. 

For  instance,  the  origin  of  the  Universe  or  the  creation  of 
this  Planet  are  still  prominent  subjects  of  speculation.  I 
should  say  this  is  a  consequence  of  the  prevalence  of  certain 
forms  of  thought,  the  development  of  which  it  is  easy  to 
trace.  I  cannot  see  that  either  problem  is  (philosophically) 
a  more  pressing  one  than  the  problem  as  to  the  nature  of 
Protoplasm,  or  if  there  be  any  Protoj)lasm.  If  meditation 
could  supply  us,  a  priori,  with  a  sufllcient  knowledge  of  the 


8  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

nature  and  laws  of  Protoplasm  —  that  is  to  say,  of  the  ulti- 
mate elements  of  all  life  —  it  would  be  impossible  to  over- 
estimate the  importance  of  such  knowledge.  It  would  cer- 
tainly be  associated  with  every  thought,  act,  and  feeling  of 
our  natures.  It  would  throw  a  new  light  over  every  one  of 
these  spheres  of  life.  If  the  problem  is  not  to  all  persons  one 
of  absorbing  interest,  it  is,  perhaps,  because  the  few  who  ex- 
pect any  sort  of  solution  do  not  look  for  it  to  meditation  a 
priori.  But  I  can  easily  conceive  a  world  —  nor  need  we 
travel  for  it  as  far  as  Laputa  —  in  which  the  one  primary 
problem,  the  one  question  that  never  could  be  shut  out,  was 
the  existence  of  a  protoplasm,  and  its  primary  laws. 

Let  me  a  little  protect  my  position  by  a  few  disclaimers. 
I  would  not  say  one  word  in  disparagement  of  the  phil- 
osophical quality  of  Curiosity.  I  am  rather  defending  it 
against  those  who  would  narrow  it  to  a  few  eternal  problems, 
and  stale  its  infinite  variety  by  condemning  it  to  so  monoto- 
nous a  task.  I  do  not  deny  that  Curiosity  is  a  most  ex- 
cellent thing ;  I  say  its  forms  are  not  four  or  five,  but  myriads. 
Then,  again,  there  are  many  who  on  philosophical,  or  on 
religious  grounds,  are  satisfied  that  the  problems  are  solved. 
To  those  who  find  these  solutions  complete,  final  and  per- 
manent, I  have,  of  course,  not  a  word  to  say.  I  haA^e  not 
now  a  word  to  say  as  to  any  supposed  solution;  nor  do  I 
say  that  the  problems  are  insoluble  in  the  abstract.  Nor 
do  I  say  one  word  against  the  unsuspected  benefits  which 
may  ensue  in  the  mere  course  of  seeking.  Those  who  feel 
they  have  found,  those  who  desire  to  seek,  are  all  my  good 
friends.  All  that  I  desire  is  to  claim  the  liberty  not  to  feel 
forced  to  ask  questions  of  which  we  have  hitherto  heard  no- 
solution;  and  to  be  able  to  do  this  without  the  reproach  of 
violating  our  inmost  natures,  or  committing  any  other  of  the 
darker  metaphysical  sins. 


NECESSITY  OF   METAPHYSICS  9 

I  have  said  that  history  does  not  show  the  human  race  to 
be  eternally  occupied  with  these  particular  problems,  or 
indeed  any  particular  problem  or  group  of  problems.  There 
have  been  vast  ages  and  mighty  races,  which  they  have 
troubled  as  little  as  they  trouble  horses  or  dogs.  It  is  usual 
entirely  to  put  aside  the  testimony  of  all  the  uncivilised  or 
semi-civilised  races.  And  thus  countless  myriads  of  intelli- 
gent human  beings,  as  completely  our  ancestors,  as  entirely 
links  in  the  chain  of  progress  as  our  own  parents,  are  ab- 
stracted from  the  inquiry  into  the  innate  qualities  of  the 
human  mind.  Certain  half-barbarous  tribes  have  certainly 
had  ideas  which  may  fairly  stand  as  the  germs  of  those  now 
in  review.  But  very  large  groups  of  these  tribes  cannot  be 
said,  without  violent  straining,  to  have  had  on  such  subjects 
as  the  creation  of  the  universe,  or  the  soul  of  man,  a  spark 
either  of  opinion  or  of  curiosity.  They  are  as  innocent  of 
any  answer  to  the  problem  as  of  the  problem  itself. 

I  will  not  enter  on  the  discussion  whether  or  not  they  have 
religious  ideas.  I  should  be  the  last  to  deny  they  had.  I 
will  not  say  that  they  have  no  conceptions  of  Divine  Beings, 
or  spiritual  relations.  I  limit  myself  strictly  to  the  statement 
that  their  religious  ideas  and  their  spiritual  problems  are 
certainly  not  ours,  or  anything  remotely  like  ours.  They  do 
not  concern  themselves  with  the  creation  of  the  universe 
or  the  distinction  of  soul  and  body,  for  the  excellent  reason 
that  their  minds  are  unable  to  grasp  these  ideas.  They  often 
show  a  very  high  intelligence,  and  are  in  jiractical  things 
progressive  enough.  But  in  things  spiritual,  the  problems 
which  profoundly  impress  them,  are  how  to  cheat  some  kind  of 
devil,  or  how  to  avoid  some  form  of  taboo.  Taboo,  in  fact, 
weighs  upon  their  souls  precisely  as  the  Judgment  weighs 
upon  some  Christians.  It  is  the  one  question  which  never 
can  be  shut  out.     All  this,  and  at  the  lowest  computation  it 


10  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

is  the  experience  of  about  nine-tenths  of  the  human  beings 
who  have  probably  lived  on  this  planet,  it  is  usual  to  exclude 
from  the  discussion.  But  why  so?  They  are  complete,  in- 
telligent human  beings,  who  undoubtedly  progress  under 
favourable  conditions. 

In  an  inquiry  what  are  the  eternal  characteristics  of  the 
human  mind,  we  ought  not  to  exclude  them  as  being  un- 
civilised. The  most  barbarous  tribes  exhibit  powers  of 
reasoning,  of  contrivance,  of  abstraction,  in  a  word,  all  the 
powers  really  instinctive  in  the  mind,  though  it  may  be  in  a 
low  form.  If  you  say  that  these  ultimate  mysteries  only  as- 
sume their  importance  with  mental  cultivation,  that  is  pre- 
cisely what  I  am  urging.  I  say  they  only  come  into  promi- 
nence with  mental  training  of  a  certain  kind.  If  they  are 
instinctive  tendencies  of  the  mind,  how  can  we  explain  their 
absence  in  great  groups  of  uncultivated  minds  ?  If  you  say 
they  have  other  mysteries  of  their  own,  I  do  not  deny  it.  The 
human  mind  has  an  ample  curiosity.  Only  their  mysteries 
are  utterly  different  from  ours,  and  form  no  proof  that  these 
mysteries  are  eternal  and  instinctive.  They  prove  the  contrary. 

But  to  leave  the  ruder  tribes,  it  is  certain  that  over  enor- 
mous periods  of  time,  and  in  races  of  remarkable  intelligence, 
the  questions  under  immediate  discussion  have  excited  no 
kind  of  attention.  Other  races  and  ages  have  had  their 
grand  problems,  but  they  have  had  nothing  to  do  with  the 
creation  of  the  world  or  the  destiny  of  the  soul.  The  Chinese, 
from  their  numbers,  their  antiquity  as  a  race,  and  the  per- 
sistence of  their  civilisation,  form  one  of  the  most  striking 
branches  of  the  human  family.  They  show  a  high  intelli- 
gence, a  profound  interest  in  moral  questions,  and  they  have 
one  of  the  noblest  and  most  ancient  of  religions.  Yet  it  is 
certain  that  the  Creation  of  the  Universe,  Divine  Govern- 
ment of  the  World,  God  or  Gods,  future  life,  are  ideas  un- 


NECESSITY  OF   METAPHYSICS  II 

known  to  them.  They  have  no  opinion  on  these  subjects, 
and  they  never  inquire  into  them.  They  worship  the  sky, 
the  visible  vault  of  Heaven,  but  they  never  assume  that  it 
made  the  Earth.  They  are  deeply  interested  in  the  Earth 
and  all  that  is  thereon.  But  they  never  seek  to  know,  nor 
do  they  pretend  to  know,  how  it  came  about.  As  to  the 
future  life  of  the  soul,  they  have  as  little  curiosity.  They 
have  never  answered  the  question,  and  they  never  propose  it. 
They  are,  however,  intensely  interested  in  the  dead  as  dead 
men.  They  know  nothing  about  incorporeal  personality, 
though  they  cherish  a  religious  veneration  for  the  corporeal 
personalities  of  their  own  ancestors. 

Let  us  turn  to  Hindoos,  at  various  times.  These  have  an 
intense  speculative  activity,  and  in  many  things  are  curiously 
assimilated  with  the  European  mind.  At  times  they  have 
undoubtedly  thrown  up  problems  bearing  some  remote  re- 
semblance to  those  in  question.  They  have,  in  fact,  eagerly 
pursued  theologico-mctaphysical  problems.  But  Buddhism 
is  the  metaphysical  product  of  the  Hindoo  intellect.  During 
many  centuries  it  held  absolute  sway  over  myriads  of  difTcrent 
races,  and  after  twenty-four  centuries  it  still  retains  much  of 
its  mighty  empire.  It  can  boast  of  great  speculative  intel- 
lects, a  sublime  morality,  and  a  devotional  spirit  of  a  unique 
kind.  Yet  it  is  certain  that  to  the  Budhist,  Creation,  if 
intelligible  at  all,  was  at  most  a  disorder  or  a  muddle ;  future 
life  was  a  horrible  dread ;  the  continuance  of  existence  the 
principle  of  evil,  and  the  soul  the  ever-present  curse.  The 
pure  Buddhist,  one  of  the  noblest  of  all  the  religious  natures, 
not  only  did  not  dread  the  extinction  of  his  personality,  but 
he  thirsted  after  it  and  prayed  for  it  with  ecstasy.  Annihila- 
tion is  his  heaven ;  God,  as  the  creator  and  the  sustaincr  of 
things,  is  his  fiend  and  his  adversary.  His  Sphinx  puts  a 
very  different  problem  from  that  of  Christian  philosophers, — 


12  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

not  how  was  it  all  made,  but  how  shall  it  all  end  ?  He,  in  his 
Pilgrim's  Progress,  borne  down  by  his  burden,  might  be 
heard  crying  out,  in  tones  as  pathetic  as  Christian's,  "Who 
shall  deliver  me  from  the  wrath  that  is  ?  how  can  I  enter  into 
the  world  which  is  not?" 

I  venture  to  think  that  this  instance  is  crucial.  Here  we 
have  one  of  the  high  religious  types,  with  a  mind  of  singular 
subtlety,  and  a  conscience  of  strange  tenderness,  to  whom  the 
great  problem  is  not  Creation,  but  Destruction;  who  never 
asks  for  the  origin  of  things,  but  meditates  only  on  their  end ; 
to  whom  every  power  which  has  to  do  with  matter  is  the 
principle  of  evil,  whose  one  hope  is  eternal  Death.  After 
this  how  can  we  continue  to  argue  that  the  soul  cannot  con- 
template annihilation,  nor  the  mind  conceive  it ;  that  the 
conscience  never  rests  till  it  feels  in  contact  with  its  Maker? 
The  Buddhist  philosopher,  who  was  a  metaphysician  pur  sang, 
no  doubt  had  his  own  metaphysical  problems.  But  his 
problems  were  other  than,  or  rather  contrary  to,  ours.  And 
when  we  are  assured  that  no  system  can  satisfy  the  human 
intellect  unless  it  reveal  to  us  the  Creator  of  the  world  and 
the  future  life  of  the  soul,  we  may  answer  that  Buddhism, 
to  which  Christianity  and  Mahometanism  are  neophytes, 
eliminated  both  ideas,  while  remaining  the  religion  of  myriads. 

The  same  thing  might  be  said  of  the  Greek  and  Roman 
nations.  They  are  of  course  our  close  cousins  in  race,  and 
our  immediate  ancestors  in  thought.  Much  of  our  phi- 
losophy is  in  cast  of  thought,  as  in  language,  simply  Greek. 
And  hence  the  germs  of  our  metaphysical  problems  may 
easily  be  traced  back  to  Greek  sources.  But  with  all  these 
deductions,  how  little  can  we  say  that  the  practical  intelligent 
Greek  and  Roman,  the  heroes  of  Plutarch,  for  instance,  and 
the  men  of  their  time,  were  seriously  occupied  with  the  ques- 
tions now  before  us,  in  any  sense  indeed  in  which  we  under- 


NECESSITY   OF   METAPHYSICS  1 3 

Stand  them.  At  times  both  Greeks  and  Romans  thought 
about  Gods ;  but  these  were  simply  the  personifications  and 
emanations  of  various  things  themselves;  certainly  not  the 
beings  who  created  them.  Some  Greek  philosophers  busied 
themselves  early  about  the  principle  of  things;  but  by  that 
they  mean  the  primitive  form  of  things,  not  the  Creator  of 
that  primitive  form.  They  had  also  a  kind  of  worship  of 
ghosts,  distinctly  different  from  the  Chinese  worship  of  the 
dead.  But  except  when  under  the  influence  of  those  special 
philosophical  or  religious  systems  that  we  are  now  discussing, 
which,  of  course,  are  found  in  Plato  or  Lucretius,  the  practi- 
cal Greek  or  Roman  never  showed  the  smallest  vital  interest 
either  in  the  problem  of  the  origin  of  things,  or  of  his  own 
living  personality  after  death. 

It  would  be  very  easy,  but  it  is  quite  unnecessary,  to  follow 
out  this  argument  into  numerous  illustrations.  It  would 
soon  appear  not  only  that  large  portions  of  the  human  race 
have  been  permanently  indifferent  to  questions  which  we  are 
now  told  ever  present  themselves  to  every  human  mind,  but 
that  the  races  and  the  ages  in  which  these  questions  have  held 
a  foremost  place  form  a  very  decided  minority  of  the  whole. 
Races  and  epochs  under  different  philosophical  influences 
have  been  occupied  with  totally  different  sets  of  problems. 
These  were  often  metaphysical  problems,  appropriate  to 
their  mental  state.  But  they  were  not  ours ;  and  they  show 
that  many  remarkable  societies  and  philosophies  make  no 
account  of  the  so-called  instinctive  questions.  The  questions 
which  to  us  seem  instinctive  could  not  even  be  rendered 
intelligible  to  them.  Those  which  to  them  seemed  the  eternal 
interests  of  the  human  soul  are  to  us  puerile  or  horrible. 
And  we  need  both  study  and  imagination  to  conceive  the 
logical  processes  which  suggested  to  them  hypotheses  so 
strange,  and  problems  so  grotesque. 


14  PHILOSOPHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

Let  US  now  turn  to  the  converse.  We  often  hear  it  said 
that  such  questions  as  those  under  discussion  have  for  every 
human  being  an  importance  so  overwhelming  that  they  must 
always  remain  apart,  while  human  nature  is  unchanged. 
Now,  there  is  no  evidence  whatever  that  these  problems  at 
all  differ  in  importance  from  a  vast  number  which  have  been 
silently  abandoned.  Nor  is  there  any  reason  to  think  that 
the  mind  has  any  difficulty  in  abandoning  the  search  of  what 
it  is  deeply  concerned  to  know,  so  soon  as  it  has  abandoned 
the  hope  of  attaining  that  knowledge.  It  is  a  really  gratuitous 
supposition  that  these  particular  questions  at  all  surpass  in 
importance  many  which  have  been  asked  with  profound 
earnestness  in  many  ages. 

The  problem  of  the  freedom  or  necessity  of  the  will  was 
once  one  of  the  cardinal  questions  of  thought.  If  that  ques- 
tion could  have  been  solved,  if  the  doctrine  of  Necessity 
could  have  secured  its  logical  victories,  it  is  impossible  to 
overrate  the  enormous  importance  that  its  solution  must  have 
had  on  human  life.  If  Kismet  were  a  fact,  and  not  merely 
a  logical  fallacy,  human  nature  would  take  a  different  turn. 
It  seems  difficult  to  say  that  any  problem  as  to  the  origin  of 
the  Universe,  or  the  superhuman  government  of  it  apart  from 
its  laws,  is  to  a  man  a  problem  more  important  than  whether 
or  not  he  has  a  free  moral  nature.  The  problem  of  Free  Will 
or  Necessity  is  still  unsolved.  Neither  alternative  has  gained 
a  permanent  hold.  Here,  then,  is  a  problem  of  transcendent  in- 
terest to  the  conscience  still  unsolved,  which  is  now  abandoned 
by  tacit  consent,  and  has  passed  into  the  limbo  of  so  many  de- 
parted questions,  where  the  ghosts  of  Nominalism  and  Realism 
gibber  at  each  other,  and  the  air  is  heavy  with  the  sighs  of  those 
who  passed  their  lives  in  searching  into  the  origin  of  Evil. 

Here,  again,  is  another  problem  to  a  moral  conscience  of 
transcendent    interest  —  from    whence    comes    moral    evil  ? 


NECESSITY   OF   METAPHYSICS  I  5 

It  is  quite  as  important  to  the  human  soul  as  the  origin  of  the 
world,  or  the  other  questions  at  issue.  Indeed,  in  a  moral 
sense,  it  includes  and  must  determine  all  the  rest.  There 
was  an  epoch  in  philosophy  when  this  tremendous  question 
was  earnestly  attacked.  ^lanicha^ism  in  all  its  forms  was 
a  real  answer.  But  ISIanicha^ism  is  out  of  credit ;  and  yet 
no  other  answer  has  taken  its  place.  No  one  in  philosophy 
now  discusses  the  origin  of  evil,  yet  no  one  pretends  that  the 
problem  is  solved.  It  is  but  another  instance  of  a  tran- 
scendent moral  problem,  about  which  we  have  accepted  no 
solution,  but  into  which  we  are  weary  of  inquiring. 

The  mere  fact  that  a  certain  knowledge,  if  we  could  get 
it,  would  be  to  us  of  infinite  value,  is  not  sufficient  reason  for 
our  continuing  to  seek  after  we  have  lost  all  hope  of  finding 
it.  How  many  kinds  of  inquiry  of  vital  moment  to  man  have 
been  silently  abandoned  in  despair?  In  various  ages  and 
epochs  the  hope  of  forming  an  individual  horoscope  has  held 
the  minds  of  generations  spellbound.  It  has  been  thought 
at  times  that  some  means  might  be  hit  on  of  foretelling  the 
events  of  life,  at  least,  the  great  turning-moments  of  it,  or 
its  final  term.  Powerful  minds  and  ingenious  generations 
have  clung  to  this  hope.  Now,  the  knowledge,  if  it  could  be 
obtained,  would  be  of  vital  importance.  There  is  nothing 
actually  impossible  in  the  hope  of  some  approximative  fore- 
cast of  the  duration  of  life.  It  concerns  each  of  us  wonder- 
fully, as  they  once  said,  to  get  such  knowledge,  if  we  can. 
Yet  the  inquiry  has  utterly  died  out,  not  by  being  formally 
proved  impossible,  so  much  as  because  nothing  ever  came 
of  it.  And  all  its  transcendent  importance  has  not,  in  an 
altered  philosophy,  sufficed  to  give  it  any  longer  a  hold  on 
our  thoughts. 

So,  too,  with  the  direct  influence  on  human  life  of  the  Stars 
and  other  objects,  and  all  those  strange  necromantic  inquiries 


l6  PHILOSOPHY  OF   COMMON   SENSE 

which  have  absorbed  so  much  intellectual  force.  Now,  it  has 
never  been  proved,  and  it  never  can  be  proved,  that  the  stars 
or  the  dead  have  no  influence  on  human  life,  or  that  the  flight 
of  birds  or  the  croaking  of  a  raven  is  absolutely  unconnected 
with  our  destinies.  The  contrary  has  never  been  proved; 
but  ages  have  debated  in  vain  what  the  influence  is,  and  by 
what  signs  we  may  know  it.  If  we  ever  could  get  to  know  it, 
it  would  be  a  matter  to  us  of  transcendent  interest.  In 
other  ages  it  was  the  ever-present  problem  of  generations. 
After  every  failure,  they  hoped  against  hope.  They  would 
be  stopped  not  even  by  the  melting  away  of  all  their  results. 
The  question,  they  said,  was  one  of  such  overpowering  in- 
terest, the  knowledge,  if  it  could  be  had,  was  so  precious, 
that  fail  as  it  might  to  find,  the  mind  must  ever  seek.  And 
generations  of  learned  pedants  lived  and  died  in  seeking. 

Again,  it  is  said  there  is  an  innate  consciousness  in  man 
that  his  soul  is  eternal.  Man  can  never  cease,  they  say, 
to  feel  interest  in  his  destiny  after  death,  and  cannot  conceive 
his  personality  to  end  with  death.  As  we  have  just  seen,  this 
is  quite  untrue  to  fact.  An  interest  in  the  life  after  death  is 
peculiar  to  certain  races  and  ages.  But  why  is  not  life  before 
birth  just  as  interesting?  How  do  we  manage  to  dwell  on 
our  post -mundane  destiny,  and  never  give  a  thought  to_  our 
pre-mundane?  Yet  if  soul  is  conscious  of  being  this  im- 
mortal entity,  it  is,  or  it  should  be,  as  hard  for  it  to  realise 
beginning  as  end  —  birth  as  death.  The  ante-natal  con- 
dition of  the  soul  ought  to  be  a  question  as  interesting  as  its 
post-mortuary  condition.  It  has  never  been  proved  that 
the  soul  has  no  ante-natal  existence.  How  can  we  shut  out 
this  momentous  inquiry?  An  ingenious  fabulist  described 
a  race  whose  whole  spiritual  anxieties  were  centred  on  the 
life  before,  not  the  life  after,  that  on  earth.  And  there  is 
nothing  in  the  theory  inconsistent  with  human  nature.     As 


NECESSITY'   OF   METAPHYSICS  I7 

a  matter  of  fact,  vast  races  have  paid  at  least  as  much  atten- 
tion to  the  one  life  as  the  other.  Transmigration  indeed  is 
at  least  a  consistent  handling  of  the  problem  of  indestructible 
personality,  for  past  life  is  at  least  as  important  to  an  inde- 
structible entity  as  its  future  life. 

The  illustrations  might  be  extended  indefinitely.  At  one 
time  to  one  race  the  paramount  problem  of  spiritual  thought 
is  the  past  life  of  the  Soul,  at  another  its  future  life,  at  another 
its  annihilation.  The  spiritual  problems  vary  indefinitely 
with  each  philosophy,  each  habit  of  mind,  each  cast  of  char- 
acter. What  have  become  of  the  tremendous  problems,  on 
which  life  and  thought  appeared  to  depend  to  the  pious  gen- 
erations of  Aquinas  and  Ockham,  Duns  Scotus  and  Abailard? 
Mighty  intellects  and  devout  souls  fought  with  passion  over 
questions  which  we  cannot  state  without  a  smile.  The  primae- 
val element,  the  harmony  of  the  spheres,  the  providence  of 
the  sky,  the  bounty  of  the  sun,  absolute  extinction,  eternal 
life,  the  freedom  of  the  will,  the  absolute  existence  of  ideas, 
the  locomotive  powers  of  angels,  their  independence  of  phys- 
ical limits,  the  creative  powers  of  the  devil,  witchcraft,  devil- 
craft,  necromancy,  and  astrology,  with  fifty  other  problems, 
have  in  turn  enthralled  particular  ages.  The  same  process 
holds  good  for  all.  Perpetual  failure  and  ever-varied  answers 
in  time  discredit  the  problems ;  they  meet  with  no  conclusive 
answers,  and  at  length  they  cease  to  be  asked.  Nor  does  the 
plea  of  their  transcendent  importance,  if  wc  knew  them, 
preserve  any  of  them  as  objects  of  interest  long  after  the  con- 
viction has  set  in  that  we  are  not  on  the  road  to  know  them. 

Those,  therefore,  to  whom  this  conviction  has  arrived, 
and  I  again  repeat  that  I  have  been  speaking  of  no  others, 
may  put  aside  these  problems  with  the  same  sense  of  rcHef 
with  which  they  have  rejected  the  answers.  The  mind  has 
an  infinite  curiosity  to  solve  a  vast   variety  of  problems; 


l8  THILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

but  there  is  no  spell  which  binds  it  to  one  more  than  to  another. 
Nor,  fortunately,  is  it  condemned  to  the  Tartarean  fate  of 
pursuing  any  task,  where  it  is  not  conscious  of  fruits,  or  of 
asking  any  question  where  it  has  definitely  despaired  of 
arriving  at  a  permanent  answer. 

In  short,  it  is  the  function  of  a  complete  philosophy,  and 
one  of  its  highest  functions,  to  determine  what  inquiries  are 
based  on  solid  grounds  and  may  lead  to  fruitful  results. 
It  is  the  part  of  the  logic  of  the  sciences  as  a  whole,  and  its 
tests  are  numerous  and  complex,  to  condemn  problems  as 
insoluble,  and  to  stamp  inquiries  as  frivolous.  Each  branch 
of  science  from  within  its  own  sphere  has  eliminated  a  suc- 
cession of  idle  puzzles,  and  has  limited  its  field  to  the  real 
and  the  prolific.  The  philosopher's  stone,  the  elixir  of  life, 
the  primum  mobile,  were  once  the  vital  problems  of  ardent 
minds,  and  in  turn  have  passed  into  a  jest  or  a  by-word. 
When  science  definitely  pronounced  that  these  mighty  summa 
bona  of  knowledge  were  ideas  alien  to  science,  and  wholly 
outside  of  it,  they  became  slowly  but  surely  the  toys  of  the 
pedant.  And  the  plea  of  the  transcendent  value  of  the 
answers,  if  the  problems  were  solved,  was  met  only  with  a 
smile. 

It  was  as  if  a  child  were  to  plead  that  it  would  be  so  delight- 
ful to  take  a  trip  to  the  moon.  Perhaps  it  might;  but  as 
far  as  science  yet  sees,  the  problem  of  lunar  excursions  is 
not  within  its  sphere,  and  from  within  its  present  sphere  is 
distinctly  insoluble.  The  plea  is  now  put  forward  again. 
Philosophy  each  day  reiterates  anew  that  all  questions  of 
original  creation,  of  personal  will  in  physical  law,  of  incor- 
poreal spirits,  are  questions  wholly  alien  to  its  sphere;  nay, 
so  far  as  its  resources  go,  wholly  insoluble  by  it,  and  indeed 
unintelligible  to  it.  And  the  plea  of  transcendent  interest, 
the  plea  that  the  questions  are  so  vital  that  they  cannot  be 


NECESSITY   OF   METAPHYSICS  1 9 

put  aside,  is  as  puerile  as  the  plea  for  an  elixir  of  life,  in  the 
midst  of  a  sound  physiology. 

But  whilst  philosophy  puts  by  with  a  smile  these  childish 
appeals  to  search  into  the  insoluble,  and  resolves  to  select 
its  problems  for  itself,  there  is  a  phase  of  the  matter  which 
it  would  do  well  to  acknowledge.  The  tenacity  with  which 
these  insoluble  mysteries  cling  to  and  cumber  the  intellectual 
soil,  the  passionate  yearning  of  the  untaught  many  after  them, 
the  vague  hankering  of  so  many  minds  around  these  barren 
wastes,  teaches  at  least  this,  that  a  negative  logic  is  in  practice 
not  sufficient.  The  cold  sentence  of  "impassable"  or  "in- 
soluble" may  be  graven  on  portals,  round  which  myriads 
of  pilgrims  have  crowded,  as  if  they  opened  into  a  promised 
land  ;  but  it  is  written  in  a  language  they  but  half  understand, 
and  they  still  hang  round  the  entrance  they  may  never  pass. 
In  a  word,  in  spite  of  logic  and  in  defiance  of  science,  meta- 
physical mysteries  will  continue  to  live  until  this  vague  yearn- 
ing is  absorbed  in  a  great  and  strenuous  emotion.  The  only 
true  cure  for  irrational  musing  over  ancient  aenigmas  is  a 
solid  faith  in  a  real  religion. 

There  will  always  be  minds  debilitated  by  hopeless  ques- 
tionings, until  a  passionate  devotion  of  the  soul  to  a  real  and 
active  power  becomes  the  atmosphere  of  general  life.  A 
religion  of  action,  a  religion  of  social  duty,  devotion  to  an 
intelligible  and  sensible  Head,  a  real  sense  of  incorporation 
with  a  living  and  controlling  force,  the  deliberate  elTort  to 
serve  an  immortal  Humanity  —  this  and  this  alone  can 
absorb  the  musings  and  the  cravings  of  the  spiritual  man. 
The  self-reliance  of  the  isolated  self  is  in  man  so  slight,  the 
craving  after  religious  communion  is  in  reality  so  strong,  that 
logic  and  science  alone  cannot  save  the  soul  from  superstition 
or  despair.  Rather  than  be  without  a  theory  which  can 
bind  the  individual  close  to  a  moral  Providence,  which  can 


20  PHILOSOPHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

make  his  life  triumphant  over  death,  man  will  cling  round  a 
theory  which  he  knows  to  be  a  formula,  or  even  a  falsehood. 
And  lives  will  continue  to  be  wasted  in  listless  yearning  around 
the  Unreal  or  the  Unknowable,  until  they  have  been  trans- 
figured into  a  world  of  social  activity  under  the  impulse  of 
devotion  to  a  Supreme  Power,  as  humanly  real  as  it  is  demon- 
strably known. 


II 

THE    SUBJECTIVE    SYNTHESIS 

^^ Notre  construction  jondamentale  de  Vordre  universel, 
resulte  d'un  concours  necessaire  entre  le  dehors  et  le  dedans. ^^  — 

AUGUSTE  COMTE. 

Wide  as  is  the  acceptance  which  the  doctrine  of  the  Rela- 
tivity of  Knowledge  has  received,  it  may  well  be  doubted  if 
we  even  yet  adopt  all  that  it  implies.  It  has  been  accepted 
by  so  many  schools  of  thought  for  their  basis,  as  almost  to 
have  passed  into  the  sphere  of  subjects  which  are  little  liable 
to  question.  But  on  the  one  hand,  this  doctrine  is  itself 
accepted  in  a  great  variety  of  meanings;  and  on  the  other, 
it  is  not  often  prolonged  to  its  legitimate  deductions.  Its 
full  force  is  often  overlooked  in  practice.  Its  philosophical 
complement  is  but  partially  apprehended.  In  the  following 
pages  it  is  attempted  to  follow  it  to  its  natural  conclusions. 
It  is  proposed  to  show  that  the  Relativity  of  Knowledge, 
rightly  understood,  puts  it  beyond  the  scope  of  the  human 
mind  to  attain  to  absolute  certainty,  to  objective  truth,  or 
to  real  laws  of  nature;  that  the  condition  of  a  sound  Phi- 
losophy is  to  ask  for  nothing  but  a  practical  certainty  and  a 
relative  truth.  And  as  a  deduction  from  this,  that  the  only 
harmony  of  ideas  possible  to  man,  is  to  be  found  in  a  Sub- 
jective Synthesis. 

It  is  very  necessar)'  to  defmc  accurately  the  phrases  which 
arc  the  first  and  the  last  terms  of  our  argument.  By  the 
Relativity  of  Knowledge  is  here  meant  the  doctrine,  that  all 


21 


22  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

facts  are  known  to  us  not  as  they  are  in  themselves,  but  as 
they  appear  to  us  through  our  sensations.  That  all  our 
reasoning  about  things  is  reasoning  upon  the  data  of  these 
sensations.  That  we  cannot  get  free  from  sensations.  That 
therefore  all  knowledge  comes  to  us  through  the  medium 
of  the  thinking  and  Reeling  organism;  and  is  affected  by  the 
states  of  the  thinking  and  feeling  organism  —  states  which 
we  can  never  look  at  or  ultimately  weigh  from  any  indepen- 
dent position,  unaffected  by  these  same  states.  That  there- 
fore all  knowledge  is  relative,  or  dependent  on  the  states 
of  the  thinking  and  feeling  organism. 

By  a  Subjective  Synthesis  is  here  meant  a  reference  of  all 
facts  to  a  harmony  of  ideas,  of  which  the  human  point  of 
view  is  the  basis.  It  is  to  group  our  ideas  round  man  as  a 
centre,  and  to  seek  for  an  organisation  of  knowledge  in  the 
bringing  it  into  coincidence  with  human  nature  as  a  whole. 

It  is  simply  impossible  to  put  philosophical  doctrines  into 
any  other  but  technical  language.  But  as  this  is  a  matter 
with  deep  practical  bearings,  it  may  be  as  well  to  attempt 
to  divest  the  proposition  of  any  of  the  "terms  of  art."  Lan- 
guage at  all  times  has  been  to  philosophers  "a  good  servant 
but  a  bad  master."  Language  is  to  philosophy  what  sen- 
sations are  to  knowledge  —  the  sole  medium  through  which 
it  can  develop  its  life,  and  yet  a  medium  which  is  continually 
found  to  be  treacherous.  To  put  the  argument,  however, 
in  the  simplest  language,  it  may  run  thus.  We  know  only 
so  far  as  we  feel.  But  we  find  by  experience  that  we  cannot 
always  trust  our  feelings.  Our  senses  play  us  false.  And 
then  we  have  no  single  or  irrefragable  test  by  which  to  know 
when  our  senses  are  playing  us  false.  Our  knowledge, 
therefore,  can  never  be  placed  on  a  basis  independent  of 
our  feelings;  and  it  must  be  limited  by,  and  conform  to, 
the   modes  of  our  feelings.     But   the   feelings,   sensations, 


THE    SUBJECTIVE   S\'NTHESIS  23 

consciousness  of  man  (call  it  what  we  will),  are  inextricably 
bound  up  with  human  nature  as  a  whole.  Therefore  our 
knowledge,  our  science,  our  philosophy,  can  only  be  per- 
manently organised  by  being  brought  into  harmonious  rela- 
tion with  the  whole  composite  human  nature. 

With  regard  to  the  philosophy  of  the  Absolute  (however 
short  may  be  the  list  of  the  absolute  truths)  nothing  here 
need  be  said.  Suft'ice  to  say  that  we  look  on  the  Absolute 
as  a  notion  which  it  is  abhorrent  to  the  human  mind  to  assert 
of  anything  whatever.  It  conveys  an  idea  (like  non-exist- 
ent) which  neither  does  nor  can  correspond  to  any  fact ;  an 
idea  which  the  mind  cannot,  consistently  with  its  own  nature, 
predicate  of  anything.  To  assert  that  any  conception  what- 
ever possesses  absolute  truth  is  like  attempting  to  state  a 
proposition  without  the  medium  of  language. 

But  those  who  recognise  certainty  only  in  the  domain  of 
law,  though  they  do  not  distinctly  claim  for  these  laws  abso- 
lute certainty,  too  often  appear  to  claim  for  them  objective 
reality.  To  such  it  seems  logically  provable  that  an  Universe 
really  exists  externally  and  independently,  and  as  such  can 
be  known  to  us  by  discovering  its  absolutely  existing  laws. 
What  science  has  hitherto  done  they  think  is  to  have  proved 
the  reality  of  these  laws,  to  have  brought  them,  like  telescopic 
stars,  within  the  range  of  vision. 

But  laws  of  nature  arc  not  objective  realities,  any  more 
than  they  are  absolute  truths.  In  looking  on  them  as  ob- 
jective realities,  there  is  indeed  no  such  contradiction  in  terms ; 
there  is  nothing  abhorrent  to  the  mind  in  the  notion  of  a  thing 
being  objective,  as  there  is  in  its  being  absolute.  On  the 
contrary,  the  mind  is  forced  to  deal  with  things  which  it 
conceives  to  be  external  as  being  truly  objective.  But  to 
hold  that  there  really  are  laws  of  nature  existing  apart  from 
and  prior  to  any  conceiving  human  mind,  or  such  as  the 


24  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

human  mind  can  grasp  in  their  real  modes,  is  only  a  variety 
of  the  absolute  hypothesis. 

All  laws  of  nature  are  subjective  generalisations,  the 
threads  on  which  the  mind  arranges  a  number  of  phenomena, 
the  impressions  received  through  the  senses.  The  subjective 
generalisations  may  or  may  not  correspond  with  (probably 
existing)  objective  facts.  But  whether  or  not  they  corre- 
spond, and  how  far,  the  mind  by  its  nature  can  never  abso- 
lutely know. 

Hence  we  decline  to  give  the  title  of  absolute  truth,  not 
only  to  many  propositions  respecting  subjects  on  which  in- 
nate knowledge  is  often  supposed,— such  as  the  self-con- 
sciousness of  existence,  the  soul,  God,  right  and  wrong,  and 
the  like, —  but  also  to  scientific  statements  respecting  physical 
laws  of  nature,  and  even  as  to  mathematics.  Mathematical 
demonstration  is  indeed  to  us  the  type  of  all  demonstration. 
But  mathematical  laws  are  simply  conclusions  from  expe- 
rience more  or  less  abstract.  To  the  non-human  mind  we 
know  not  what  two  and  two  might  make. 

To  the  old  ontological  metaphysics  there  has  succeeded 
a  new  materialist  metaphysics,  based  on  assumptions  equally 
gratuitous.  Metaphysicians  at  all  times  have  insisted  on 
some  transcendental  truth  as  the  attribute  of  their  hypotheses 
respecting  man,  matter,  and  God.  There  appears  to  be  an 
order  of  physicists  who  substitute  for  this  transcendental 
truth  an  objective  reality,  equally  incapable  of  proof.  I 
know  that  the  Sun  attracts  the  earth ;  and  I  know  that  man 
has  benevolent  instincts ;  and  I  know  that  I  exist.  And  my 
knowledge  of  all  these  facts  is  a  knowledge  of  equal  degree  of 
certainty;  but  no  one  of  these  propositions  can  be  proved 
to  be  objective  truth,  resting  on  a  basis  that  no  conceivable 
evidence  could  ever  destroy.  The  Sun  might  repel,  and  not 
attract  the  earth;    man  might  conceivably  have  no  purely 


THE   SUBJECTIVE   SYNTHESIS  2$ 

benevolent  instincts;  and  I  might  be  the  cell  of  an  animal 
filling  space.  And  no  reasoning  can  make  us  absolutely 
certain  of  the  contrary. 

It  is  easy,  but  hardly  necessary,  to  distinguish  this  from 
Scepticism.  Philosophical  scepticism  is  the  Despair  of 
Philosophy.  It  undertakes  to  prove  that  nothing  can  be 
in  the  truest  sense  known.  Resorting,  like  the  rest  of  the 
world,  to  good  sense  in  practical  matters,  theoretically  Scepti- 
cism denies  the  existence  of  ultimate  philosophical  truth, 
of  scientific  certaintv,  of  universal  and  constant  laws.  The 
common  sense  philosophy  does  precisely  the  contrary.  We 
insist  as  fully  as  any  others  on  the  discoverability  of  philo- 
sophical truth.  Only  we  say  that  philosophical  truth  is 
relative,  and  that  which  is  called  absolute  truth  is  no  truth 
at  all,  but  something  incongruous  to  the  mind.  We  base 
everything  on  scientific  certainty;  but  then  we  say  that 
scientific  certainty  means  only  the  highest  form  of  practical 
certainty;  and  that  any  certainty  which  pretends  to  be  ab- 
solute, and  incapable  of  being  modified  by  experience,  is 
not  scientific  at  all ;   not  knowledge,  but  an  hallucination. 

We  call  all  scientific  knowledge  the  knowledge  of  constant 
laws ;  but  then  we  say  these  must  be  recognised  as  being  the 
conceptions  of  human  minds,  and  resting  only  on  the  relative 
certainty  proper  to  human  minds.  Wc  have  and  can  have 
no  proof  that  the  laws  or  the  things  exist  outside  of  the  human 
mind  in  that  mode.  In  a  word,  we  say  that  true  philosophical 
knowledge  is  not  concerned  with  the  relations  of  things  ob- 
jectively to  each  other  as  they  exist  in  space,  but  is  concerned 
only  with  the  subjective  relations  of  our  impressions  received 
from  what  seem  to  us  to  be  things.  And  we  should  say  that 
any  knowledge  which  professed  to  be  something  else  than  this, 
professes  to  be  that  which  knowledge  is  not,  and  cannot  be. 

The  truth  is,  that  once  accept  the  conception  of  the  rela- 


26  PHILOSOPHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

tivity  of  knowledge  in  its  full  sense,  then  the  really  subjective 
character  of  the  whole  of  our  thoughts  about  the  external 
world,  and  of  our  knowledge  of  the  laws  of  nature  follows 
as  a  matter  of  course.     It  is  sometimes  supposed  possible 
to  say,  "We  grant  that  our  knowledge  of  the  external  world 
comes  to   us  through  our  sensations,   but  when  we  have 
rightly  ordered  our  sensations,  then  we  come  to  the  true  laws 
of  nature  which  produce  them.     The  laws  are  real  laws  in 
the  things,  and  we  apprehend  them  just  as  they  are  in  them- 
selves.   We  do  not  pretend  to  know  '  things  in  themselves,'  but 
wedo  get  to  knowthe  lawsof  things  as  they  (i.e.  the  laws)  are." 
A  little  reflection  will  show  that  this  is  without  foundation. 
If  we  get  our  knowledge  of  things  solely  through  the  modes 
in  which  they  affect  our  senses,  then  what  we  call  laws  sue 
our  own  arrangements  of  our  impressions.     And,  as  has  been 
effectually  shown,  laws  of  nature  cannot  be  uhimately  re- 
solved into  sets  less  numerous  than  our  distinguishable  sen- 
sations.    We  may  show  some  connection  between  the  laws 
of  heat  and  those  of  motion;    but  the  sensation  of  being 
scorched  is  not  the  sensation  of  moving  from  one  spot  to 
another.     Whatever  miay  be  the  true  series  of  categories, 
categories  of  some  kind  there  are  in  all  philosophy.     And, 
except  in  mere  mysticism,  our  knowledge  of  the  pro_perties 
of  heated  bodies  can  never  be  the  same  thing  as  our  know- 
ledge of  the  properties  of  moving  bodies.     In  a  word,  all 
rational  grouping  of  our  knowledge  about  external  nature 
depends  ultimately  on  the  various  powers  of  sensation  we 
possess,   which   are   intimately  associated  with  our  bodily 

forms. 

Is  it  rational  to  suppose  that  an  external  Universe  is  ob- 
jectively cast  in  these  same  moulds  of  our  minds  —  minds 
which  so  closely  depend  on  our  physical  powers?  If  we 
find  all  our  knowledge  grouped  in  sets  corresponding  with 


THE   SUBJECTIVE   SYNTHESIS  2/ 

our  different  senses,  is  it  not  more  likely  that  the  grouping  is 
that  of  our  own  faculties,  and  not  the  objective  grouping  of 
the  things?  Does  the  Infinite  Universe  through  Space  con- 
form to  the  modes  of  mind  of  the  human  mites  which  inhabit 
this  planetary  speck  ?  IMust  not  life  in  other  worlds  be  sub- 
ject to  wholly  dilTerent  physical  conditions?  Yet  if  the  cate- 
gories of  human  logic  be  the  true  categories  of  the  Universe, 
and  the  laws  of  human  science  be  the  true  laws  of  a  real 
Universe,  these  categories  and  these  laws  would  be  incon- 
ceivable to  beings  who  had  a  totally  different  sensory  ap- 
paratus. The  philosophers  of  Sirius  might  (for  aught  we 
know)  be  inflammable  gases,  rays  of  light,  intelligent  others. 
How  could  these  gases  or  aethers  assimilate  or  formulate  the 
deductions  of  modern  science  ?  Suppose  that  a  blade  of  grass 
or  a  grain  of  sand  thinks  —  what  is  its  view  of  Geometry? 
In  fact,  once  admit  that  our  system  of  the  laws  of  nature  is 
closely  related  to  our  bodily  organs,  and  it  is  impossible  to 
think  of  these  laws  of  nature  as  being  anything  but  our 
methods  of  grouping  our  sensations.  It  was  once  absurdly 
proposed  to  call  laws  of  nature  the  thoughts  of  the  Divine 
mind  —  which  is  equivalent  to  attributing  to  a  Divine  Being 
heads,  eyes,  legs,  and  arms.  The  truth  is,  that  laws  of  nature 
are  rather  —  the  thoughts  of  the  human  mind  (based  upon 
our  own  sensations). 

But  what  is  it  that  this  doctrine  properly  involves? 

The  relative  philosophy  involves  a  legitimate  deduction 
from  it,  which  it  does  not  always  receive  from  those  who 
profess  that  doctrine  generally.  The  philosophy  of  expe- 
rience through  the  external  senses  rejects  any  notion  of  an 
absolute  knowledge  of  things  in  themselves.  It  professes 
to  know  phenomena  only  through  the  senses,  and  truths  only 
by  processes  of  inference,  and  to  know  nothing  of  absolute 
being.     But  doing  and  professing  this,  we  fmd  it  sometimes 


28  PHILOSOPHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

ready  to  invest  its  laws  of  nature  with  very  much  the  same 
character  of  absolute  truth  or  objective  reahty  which  was 
claimed  for  the  intuitional  truths.  We  hear  language  about 
physical  laws  as  if  they  possessed,  not,  indeed,  a  Divine, 
but  a  kind  of  Material  sanction,  if  not  a  superhuman,  still 
a  kind  of  Cosmical  authority,  not  given  to  other  truth.  To 
some  minds,  for  instance,  the  law  of  Gravitation  seems  to 
possess  a  sanctity  formerly  reserved  to  the  idea  of  Creation. 
It  is  literally  supposed  to  be  a  reality  in  itself;  an  objective 
necessity,  which  the  Universe  has  imposed  on  it  by  Fate; 
something  which  has  a  real  existence  or  force  of  its  own. 
Man,  they  would  say,  has  simply  found  it  out.  It  possesses, 
they  seem  to  imply,  a  certainty  and  a  reality,  an  objectivity 
as  truth,  totally  different  from  that  of  the  doctrines  of  Moral- 
ity, for  instance.  Now  all  this  is  simply  to  substitute  one 
fictitious  Cosmogony  for  another,  the  Revelation  of  the  savans 
for  the  Revelation  of  the  priests. 

The  law  of  Gravitation  is,  no  doubt,  a  very  general  law, 
and  rests  on  an  unusual  body  of  evidence,  a  vast  mass  of 
verifications,  and  a  rare  concensus  of  testimony.  But,  after 
all,  it  is  only  the  best  explanation  which  the  human  mind  can 
give  of  a  number  of  phenomena.  You  can  never  carry 
it  beyond  a  theory,  which  appears  to  fit  exactly  a  vast  body 
of  facts,  and  has  been  verified  by  every  available  form  of  test. 
But  still  it  is  only  a  theory,  verified  so  far  as  the  human  mind 
can  verify  its  theories.  It  is  an  hypothesis  which  has  stood 
all  tests,  an  accepted  explanation.  Man  did  not  so  much 
find  it  out,  as  he  created  or  imagined  it.  Nor  is  it  in  the 
least  more  certain,  nor  has  it  more  objective  reality,  than  a 
number  of  moral  truths,  which  most  persons  would  hesitate 
to  call  absolute  truths.  Even  to  call  it  a  universal  law  is  to 
attribute  to  it  an  objective  reality,  beyond  our  experience, 
for  which  we  have  no  authority.     It  has  no  higher  scientific 


THE   SUBJECTIVE   SYNTHESIS  29 

demonstration  to  rest  on,  for  instance,  than  the  law  of  social 
progress,  even  though  its  area  of  operation  is  infinitely  more 
vast.  It  is  no  more  worthy  of  belief.  The  latter  law  is  just 
in  the  same  sense  a  law,  just  as  true,  just  as  authoritative. 
The  law  of  Gravitation  is  a  law,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  of  uni- 
versal application ;  but  it  is  not  a  law  of  any  higher  rank 
than  the  law  that  man  possesses  benevolent  instincts. 

As  was  before  said,  no  attempt  will  be  made  here  to  reason 
out  in  full  the  doctrine  of  the  relative  character  of  all  know- 
ledge, with  its  various  corollaries.  It  is  too  wide  a  subject 
to  attempt  to  give  the  grounds  for  it,  depending,  as  they  do, 
on  the  entire  mental  attitude  which  has  become  the  habit 
of  each  particular  mind.  It  is  obvious  that  it  rests  ultimately 
on  the  habit  of  regarding  all  that  can  properly  be  called 
knowledge  as  a  process  of  inference  from  impressions  of  the 
senses.  Not  much  follows  if  we  distinguish  "I  feel  hot" 
from  "I  know  that  I  feel  hot."  These  are  only  varieties 
of  expression  for  the  same  fact.  In  the  way  of  thinking 
habitual  to  me,  I  feel  many  things ;  but  I  do  not  know  any- 
thing outside  of  myself  of  direct  consciousness,  that  is,  by 
immediate  intuition  not  drawn  from  any  process  of  inference 
from  my  sensations.  All  knowledge,  properly  so  called,  I 
take  to  be  derived  by  processes  of  reasoning  from  data  sup- 
plied by  the  impressions  of  the  senses. 

Thus  the  double  element  of  doubt  in  all  our  knowledge, 
first,  as  to  the  correctness  of  the  reasoning  process,  and 
secondly,  as  to  the  trustworthiness  of  the  senses,  introduces 
into  every  idea  an  inherently  relative  character;  relative 
as  respects  its  answering  to  any  objective  reality,  and  relative 
as  respects  its  logical  accuracy.  All  knowledge  in  this  view 
ultimately  rests  on  the  assumption  that  sensations  which  have 
frequently  been  found  together  will  continue  to  be  found 
together,  an  assumption  which  the  mind  is  prone  to  make, 


30  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

but  does  not  intuitively  know  to  be  true.  All  knowledge 
(sensations  not  being  knowledge)  is  therefore  only  probable 
truth;  of  the  very  highest  degree  of  probability,  no  doubt; 
in  fact,  passing  into  practical  certainty,  that  certainty  on 
which  we  act  even  in  matters  of  life  and  death. 

After  all,  it  is  not  absolute,  but  is  always  something  short 
of  abstract  certainty.  And  all  knowledge  of  the  external 
rests  on  the  assumption  that  sensations  are  really  caused  by 
something  without  us,  and  are  not  due  to  mere  changes 
within.  And  this  assumption  cannot  be  logically  proved 
either  from  without  or  from  within.     In  a  word,  we  take  all 

n 

knowledge  (on  grounds  in  which,  no  doubt,  all  the  sensation 
schools  of  thought  agree)  to  be  the  picture  only  which  the 
mind  fashions  out  of  its  impressions ;  and  a  picture  which  is 
only  a  highly  probable  adumbration  of  the  (probably)  ex- 
ternal facts. 

But  if  all  schools  of  the  Experience  philosophy  take  this 
as  their  basis,  it  may  be  asked,  Why  should  we  insist  on  this 
here?  No  doubt,  speaking  in  the  abstract,  this  view  is 
accepted  without  more  words  by  all  these  schools,  but  it 
seems  important  to  insist  that  they  bear  it  in  mind  in  practice. 
In  dealing  with  an  ontologist,  almost  every  adherent  of  the 
phenomenal  theory  holds  this  language  in  its  widest  sense. 
But  in  the  sphere  of  special  science  does  he  not  often  tend 
to  forget  that  the  law  of  gravitation,  for  instance,  is  a  sub- 
jective creation,  —  a  verified  hypothesis,  —  and  is  not  an 
objective  law  of  nature,  or  an  absolute  certainty?  Does 
he  never  in  practice  glide  into  the  tone  of  mind  that  these 
physical  laws  are  solid  truth,  of  a  kind  more  tangible  to  rest 
on  than  moral  or  social  laws,  which  are  at  best  but  theories  ? 
Does  he  not  imagine  himself  often  really  exorcising  the  secrets 
of  nature,  instead  of  framing  the  simplest  explanation  which 
will  satisfy  his  mind  whilst  it  meets  the  facts  ? 


THE   SUBJECTIVE   S^TSTTHESIS  3 1 

There  is  reason  to  fear  that  this  conception  of  the  rela- 
tivity of  all  knowledge  —  entirely  accepted  as  it  is  in  abstract 
speculation  by  the  whole  of  the  Experience  school  —  is 
not  equally  grasped  in  the  practical  work  of  investigation. 
The  truly  relative  conception  of  knowledge  should  make 
us  habitually  feel  that  our  physical  science,  our  laws,  and 
discoveries  in  nature,  are  all  imaginative  creations  —  poems, 
in  fact  —  which  strictly  correspond  with  the  limited  range 
of  phenomena  we  have  before  us,  therein  differing  from  true 
poems,  but  which  we  never  can  know  to  be  the  real  modes  of 
any  external  being.  We  have  really  no  ground  whatever 
for  believing  that  these  our  theories  are  the  ultimate  and  real 
scheme  on  which  an  external  world  (if  there  be  one)  works, 
nor  that  the  external  world  objectively  possesses  that  organ- 
ised order  which  we  call  science. 

For  all  that  we  know  to  the  contrarv,  man  is  the  creator 
of  the  order  and  harmony  of  the  universe,  for  he  has  imagined 
it.  The  objective  order  of  the  real  universe  may  be  (probably 
is)  something  infinitely  more  subtle  and  highly  organised  than 
our  conceptions.  The  image  of  it  we  frame  may  be  as  little 
like  the  truth,  as  rough  an  emblem  of  it,  as  the  picture- 
writing  of  a  savage.  Or  again,  the  objective  order  of  the 
universe  may  be  something  infinitely  more  simple,  and  our 
disparate  conceptions  may  be  due  not  to  real  differences,  but 
to  idiosyncrasies  of  mind.  Or  (what  is  most  improbable) 
there  may  be  no  sort  of  real  order  at  all  outside  the  mind, 
and  our  notion  of  order  may  be  a  dream,  just  as  a  musician 
standing  beneath  Niagara  might  hear  some  symphony  in 
the  Babel  of  waters ;  though  the  music  would  be  in  the  musi- 
cian, and  not  in  the  roar  of  the  cataract.  But  whether  the 
objective  order  of  the  universe  be  something  infmitcly  more 
subtle  than  our  conceptions,  or  infinitely  more  simple,  or 
there  be  no  order  at  all,  and  the  idea  of  an  order  be  a  figment 


32  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

of  our  own,  or  even  if  there  be  no  objective  universe  at  all, 
it  does  not  in  the  least  concern  us  to  know.  In  any  of  these 
cases  we  are  by  nature  incapable  of  getting  at  the  objective 
truth;  it  is  idle  to  speculate  on  it,  and  it  is  waste  of  time 
to  investigate  on  the  assumption  that  if  we  only  work  hard 
enough  and  long  enough  we  shall  come  at  the  objective  har- 
mony at  last. 

Now  if  in  all  that  we  know  of  the  world  without  we  must 
draw  all  our  data  from  the  sensations  we  have ;  if  all  our  laws 
of  nature  are  only  the  mind's  modes  of  grouping  the  sequences 
and  the  simultaneities  of  its  sensations ;  and  if  all  our  sciences 
are  only  systematic  arrangements  of  these  generalisations, 
it  follows  that  the  classification  of  our  sciences,  their  con- 
nections, relations,  subdivisions,  and  rank  —  in  a  word,  the 
catena  of  our  knowledge  —  must  be  determined  ultimately 
by  our  faculties  for  generalisation,  by  the  capacity  of  our 
mental  system  to  throw  its  ideas  into  organic  relations,  and 
not  by  any  actual  classification  which  may  objectively  exist 
in  things  outside  our  minds.  But  every  step  in  our  processes 
of  forming  generalisations  brings  into  play  two  sets  of  faculties 
—  the  one  receptive,  the  other  creative ;  the  observations  of 
the  facts,  and  the  conceptions  by  which  we  give  them  order. 

Man  is  a  composite  organism  of  correlated  elements. 
The  intellect  is  not  an  independent  part  of  man  which  func- 
tions by  itself.  It  can  only  be  supplied  with  material  by  sen- 
sations, and  it  is  stimulated  to  action  invariably  by  emotions. 
The  simplest  meditation  has  some  motive,  and  some  end  in 
action.  As  Aristotle  says,  mere  intelligence  (without  the 
motive  force  of  a  desire)  does  nothing.  The  notion  of  mind 
constructing  its  own  conceptions  and  systematising  know- 
ledge independently  is  an  idle  fable.  The  mind  is  capable 
of  no  sustained  and  coherent  effort  except  when  it  works  in 
connection  and  harmony  with  emotions  and  energies  —  i.e. 


THE   SUBJECTIVE   SYNTHESIS  33 

with  the  human  being  as  a  whole.  But  that,  again,  brings 
into  play  the  whole  range  of  the  conditions  in  which  man  is 
placed,  and  the  whole  range  of  the  moral  faculties  he  pos- 
sesses. Man,  in  a  word,  is  a  system  in  himself,  and  his  mind 
cannot  normally  work  except  as  part  of  that  system,  and  in 
complete  accord  with  it.  And  his  mind  cannot  effectually 
group  its  conceptions  in  any  coherent  form,  unless  that  order 
or  harmony  of  conceptions  is  in  true  correspondence  with  the 
order  and  harmony  of  the  human  being  in  all  its  relations, 
material,  active,  affective,  and  intellectual.  That  is  the  Sub- 
jective Synthesis. 

What  is  the  practical  utility  of  the  idea  here  maintained? 
It  is  that  all  independent  efforts  to  wrest  her  secrets  from 
Nature  objectively,  and  ever  more  and  more  secrets,  in  the 
general  hope  that  some  day  all  those  secrets  will  unfold  and 
group  themselves  in  their  real  order  and  harmony,  as  they 
exist  in  nature  —  all  such  efforts  are  in  vain.  All  eflforts 
must  start  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  human  being  who  is 
inquiring,  from  the  intellectual  and  moral  wants  of  the  man. 
The  thing  required,  the  only  thing  possible,  is  to  bring  the 
man's  symphony  of  conceptions  into  more  and  more  com- 
plete coincidence  with  his  impressions.  To  catalogue,  and 
co-ordinate,  and  re-distinguish  the  impressions  for  ever,  will 
never  lead  to  anything  if  the  organising  idea  be  forgotten. 
Out  of  the  multiplicity  of  impressions  will  come  chaos,  and 
not  knowledge.  If  the  impressions  do  correspond  with 
realities,  and  if  the  external  realities  do  contain  their  own 
order,  both  of  which  we  must  believe,  but  cannot  know,  still 
we  cannot  ever  get  to  know  that  order.  The  dispersive, 
the  analytic  method  of  study  can  never  give  us  knowledge 
—  for  this  is  an  organised  order  of  ideas.  If  there  be  an  or- 
ganised order  of  things  without,  the  mind  cannot  compre- 
hend it ;    and  if  we  neglect  the  conditions  of  an  organised 

D 


34  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

order  of  ideas  within,  we  shall  never  get  at  any  order  at  all. 
There  are  profound  meanings  in  Bacon's  aphorism  —  "The 
subtlety  of  nature  far  exceeds  the  subtlety  of  man's  mind." 

The  notion  from  which  we  start  —  all  knowledge  is  an  in- 
ference from  sensations  —  introduces  a  certain  dualism, 
which  extends  throughout  philosophy:  the  observations  of 
phenomena,  on  the  one  hand;  the  mental  inference  from 
these  observations,  on  the  other;  or,  observations  and  con- 
ceptions. Knowledge,  in  the  truest  sense,  is  the  perfect 
equipoise  and  correlation  of  these  two.  When  one  or  other 
is  developed  out  of  proportion  to  its  fellow,  the  balance  is 
lost,  and  knowledge  is  pro  tanto  diminished.  In  one  form 
of  philosophy  —  indeed,  more  or  less  in  all  the  theological 
and  metaphysical  forms  —  the  conceptions  are  developed  at 
the  expense  of  the  observations.  Dogmas,  theories,  and  cos- 
mogonies are  created,  and  no  corresponding  systematisation  of 
observed  facts  is  accomplished.  There  is  no  true  verification. 
Philosophy  and  science  then  consist  of  raw  hypotheses, 
mental  creations,  which  do  not  fit  all  the  known  sensations. 

There  is  the  opposite  error  —  and  we  are  in  the  midst  of 
it  now.  The  facts  are  multiplied,  and  observations  are  ex- 
aggerated out  of  all  proportion  to  the  symmetry  of  the  con- 
ceptions, without  which  they  must  remain  chaotic.  Of 
course  the  simplest  observation  implies  some  sort  of  hypoth- 
esis ;  but  observations  can  be  carried  on  in  the  almost  entire 
absence  of  any  true  and  complete  harmony  of  general  con- 
ceptions. Without  this  they  are  worthless,  and  even  inju- 
rious. The  possible  facts,  the  conceivable  observations, 
are  simply  infinite.  A  withered  leaf  might  afford  observa- 
tions which  it  would  occupy  a  lifetime  to  record.  Man 
could  no  more  catalogue  all  the  facts  in  any  single  branch  of 
science  than  a  caterpillar  could  construct  an  exhaustive 
natural  history  of  this  planet. 


THE  SUBJECTIVE   SYNTHESIS  35 

WTiere  facts  around  us  are  infinite,  simply  to  collect  the 
facts  is  simply  to  count  the  grains  of  sand  on  the  sea-shore, 
or  the  breakers  as  they  roll  to  land.  A  myriad  years  of  such 
study  cannot  give  knowledge;  and  the  more  of  such  facts 
are  collected,  the  more  difficult  it  becomes  ever  to  give  order 
to  the  chaos.  Nay,  the  thin  and  inorganic  hypotheses  which 
may  serve  as  the  ground  even  of  such  observations  leave 
the  matter  no  better.  Discordant  hypotheses,  not  capable 
of  being  built  up  into  the  stately  fabric  of  knowledge,  are 
as  great  an  encumbrance  as  the  mass  of  facts  themselves. 
Science  pursued  on  this  objective  method  still  remains,  and 
ever  will  remain,  riidis  indigestaque  moles.  Partial,  disparate, 
independent  conceptions  of  laws  (however  good  in  the  in- 
fancy of  science)  choke  the  ground  of  philosophy  in  its  ma- 
turity. When  the  great  work  of  organising  our  knowledge 
is  in  full  operation,  all  observations  become  retrograde  that 
are  not  vitalised  by  the  organic  conceptions  of  the  living 
human  whole. 

The  function  of  true  philosophy  is  to  avoid  equally  the 
error  of  exaggerating  the  part  of  the  conceptions  or  the  use- 
fulness of  the  observations.  A  purely  subjective  philosophy 
ends  in  a  dream.  A  purely  objective  science  ends  in  a  chaos. 
The  function  of  philosophy  is  to  carry  on  simultaneously 
the  double  task  by  co-ordinate  methods;  to  order  the  con- 
ceptions in  due  accord  with  the  collecting  of  the  observa- 
tions. The  phenomena  must  be  selected,  co-ordinated, 
classified;  whilst  the  corresponding  conceptions  are  as- 
sociated and  organised.  And  just  as  those  conceptions  be- 
come vicious,  which  fail,  on  proper  tests,  to  meet  the  obser- 
vations, or  which  conflict  with  them ;  so  those  observations 
are  worthless  which  lie  out  of  the  field  of  the  organising  con- 
ceptions, and  jar  upon  their  symmetry.  And  this  symmetry, 
be  it  remembered,  is  not  purely  intellectual,  but  must  in- 


36  PHILOSOPHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

elude  a  harmony  of  the  whole  of  the  powers  of  man  in  relation 
to  his  external  necessities.  When  the  whole  system  of  man's 
observations  corresponds  with  the  entire  system  of  human 
nature,  a  true  harmony  is  established.  And  this  is  a  sub- 
jective synthesis,  in  which  man  is  (philosophically)  the  centre 
of  his  world. 

Illustrations  of  all  things  are  dangerous  in  philosophy,  but 
I  am  tempted  to  risk  one  as  an  explanation.  An  aphis,  or  an 
ant,  on  a  rose-bush  in  a  garden,  a  house-fly  in  a  room,  might 
conceivably  be  endowed  with  intellect  equal  or  much  su- 
perior to  man's.  The  aphis,  ant,  and  fly  would  construct 
its  theories,  its  laws  of  nature,  its  sciences;  the  gardener's 
hose  or  spade  would  form  its  seasons,  showers,  earthquakes. 
Some  theories  fairly  meeting  the  facts  of  the  garden  and  the 
room  the  aphis  and  the  fly  might  construct,  but  how  ludi- 
crously short  of  the  vaster  laws  of  the  earth  !  Yet  even  there 
a  sensible  aphis  or  fly,  wisely  renouncing  the  search  after  an 
objective  theory  of  its  universe,  might  make  its  brief  life 
more  complete  by  observations  relatively  within  its  powers, 
and  suggested  by  its  wants. 

To  what  does  this  tend?  To  sum  up  the  argument,  it 
runs  thus :  The  belief  that  our  knowledge  of  the  external 
world  is  derived  by  a  process  of  inference  from  data  supplied 
by  the  impressions  of  the  senses,  involves  the  relativity  of 
knowledge  in  its  full  sense.  From  the  sources  of  our  know- 
ledge, it  always  remains  a  system  of  mental  pictures.  And 
it  is  impossible  for  us  to  -find;  we  must  create  our  synthesis 
of  nature.  And  as  a  painter  to  paint  a  picture  must  create 
his  own  composition,  and  however  accurate,  no  photographic 
copying  of  parts  can  succeed  in  making  a  composition,  so  the 
thinker  in  his  closest  study  of  phenomena  must  hold  on  by 
the  subjective  synthesis  which  has  been  created  by  human 
philosophy.     And    this,    the    true    method,    condemns    the 


THE   SUBJECTIVE  S\Tn'HESIS  37 

breaking  up  of  subjects  into  independent  studies,  for  myriads 
of  photographers  cannot  make  a  picture,  without  a  subjective 
conception  to  group  the  details  around.  It  condemns  all 
dispersive  investigations;  for  whatever  be  the  real  order  of 
the  external,  this  cannot  be  revealed  as  such  to  the  human 
thought.  It  condemns  all  studies  of  inorganic  matter  not 
guided  by  studies  of  organic  matter,  and  all  studies  of  or- 
ganic matter  not  guided  by  studies  of  moral  nature;  for 
nothing  is  true  knowledge  that  is  not  relative  to  the  human 
nature  in  its  complex  whole,  that  does  not  tend  to  perfect 
the  synthesis  within  man;  and  this  synthesis  is  not  merely 
intellectual,  but  is  moral  also. 

Such,  as  I  understand  it,  is  the  logical  deduction  from 
relativity  of  knowledge,  and  the  origin  of  knowledge  in  in- 
ferences from  the  data  presented  by  the  senses.  The  con- 
tinued and  systematic  specialising  of  study,  the  purely  in- 
tellectual pursuit  of  truth  as  truth,  and  the  seeking  in  the 
phenomena  of  nature  for  objective  and  real  laws  of  nature, 
must  ultimately  rest  for  its  justification  on  a  conception  of 
an  objective  order  of  things  discoverable  by  man.  But  this 
is  only  a  form  of  ontology,  an  attempt  to  get  at  things  as  they 
are,  and  is  consistent  only  with  a  belief  in  some  form  of  the 
philosophy  of  the  absolute.  The  reign  of  metaphysical 
problems  must  last  whilst  we  admit  the  possibility  of  abso- 
lute certainty,  and  the  attainment  of  objective  truth.  Hence, 
all  such  (of  whom  the  pure  specialist,  be  the  specialism 
physical  or  moral,  is  the  type)  are  radically  unable  to  hold 
their  ground  against  the  ontologist,  the  intuitionist,  and  even 
the  theologian.  On  the  contrary,  they  are  at  bottom  the  real 
feeders  of  all  the  metaphysical  schools  of  thought.  And 
since  they  seek  to  know  nature  as  she  is,  they  are  not  of  the 
Relative  Philosophy  at  all,  but  arc  in  the  truest  sense  Ontolo- 
gists. 


38  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

It  is  obvious  that  this  argument  is  purely  addressed  to  those 
who  deduce  ail  knowledge  from  experience,  and  that  it  does 
not  touch  any  opinion  resting  on  an  intuitional  basis.     What 
have  we  to  say  to  these?     We  must  freely  confess  nothing, 
or  rather,  nothing  but  one  practical  suggestion,  which  we  do 
not  venture  to  call  a  philosophical  argument.     It  would  be 
idle  in  the  extreme  to  attack  a  view  which  rests  on  the  whole 
consensus  of  logical  method  which  each  mind  adopts  for 
itself,  on  the  set  of  a  vast  current  of  ideas.     Let  us  offer  the 
homage  of  respect  for  a  system  of  thought  which  we  cannot 
share,  but  the  vitality,  if  not  the  potency,  of  which  we  pro- 
foundly recognise.     And  the  only  true  respect  for  it  which 
we  can  show  is  to  avoid  the  appearance  of  narrow  criticism  or 
partial  skirmish.     When  men  of  high  moral  and  intellectual 
power  assure  us  that  they  find  rest,  unity,  and  fruit  in  intui- 
tional truth,  and  in  innate  conceptions  about  themselves, 
their  own  natures,  the  external  world,  its  origin,  its  construc- 
tion, and  maintenance,  the  future  state  of  what  they  conceive 
to  be  some  part  of,  or  the  essence  of,  themselves,  their  duty 
here,  and  a  sense  of  right  and  wrong,  far  be  it  from  us  to 
dispute  the  value  and  reality  of  this  knowledge.     It  would 
be  quite  contrary  to  our  own  principles  to  attempt  to  prove 
their  conclusions  mistaken. 

If  we  do  not  adopt  them,  it  is  not  because  we  believe  them 
to  be  false,  but  because  they  fail  to  interest  us.  We  can  get 
no  practical  good  out  of  them ;  and  to  us  they  lie  out  of  the 
sphere  of  connected  thought.  The  one  practical  suggestion 
which  is  all  that  we  have  to  submit  to  any  disciple  of  any 
intuitional  school  is  this.  If  this  kind  of  knowledge  or  this 
kind  of  thought  be  really  inborn  in  human  nature,  if  these 
problems  indeed  must  be  asked  by  the  human  mind,  why 
is  not  this  knowledge  found  in  all  men ;  how  can  these  prob- 
lems be  habitually  absent  from  any  one  mind?     Of  course, 


THE   SUBJECTIVE  SYNTHESIS  39 

we  mean  trained  minds,  men  mentally  and  morally  compe- 
tent to  test  this  question  gravely.  One  instance  of  a  mind, 
which  on  these  questions  is  a  real  blank,  one  instance  of  a 
cultivated  man  who  never  did,  and  cannot,  feel  any  interest 
in  these  problems,  ought  to  be  decisive  on  the  point.  One 
such  case  ought  to  establish  that  these  abysmal  questions 
of  theology  and  metaphysics  are  not  implanted  in  the  fibres 
of  human  nature,  but  are  artificial,  just  like  the  question  of 
the  mediaeval  schoolmen  if  angels  could  exist  in  vacuo. 

The  practical  objection  to  the  intuitionist  is  simply  this. 
We  have  amongst  us  those  who  fail  to  detect  in  themselves  the 
sparks  or  germs  of  such  knowledge,  who  do  not  acknowledge 
any  such  problem  as  ever  present  to  them,  save  as  the  vagary 
of  an  idle  hour.  To  them  (and  some  of  them  have  been 
thought  to  be  well  equipped  both  on  intellectual  and  moral 
grounds  for  the  task,  men  learned  once  in  all  the  learning 
of  the  Egyptians),  to  them,  these  problems,  as  to  how  this 
(apparently)  external  world  came  about,  or  in  what  kind  of 
way,  other  than  that  of  this  sentient  life,  the  thinking  thing 
may  continue  to  exist,  are  as  the  problem  if  angels  can  exist 
in  vacuo  —  problems  which  they  neither  ask,  nor  solve,  nor 
busy  about,  nor  think  of,  except  with  a  smile.  It  is  not  the 
particular  answers,  but  the  questions  which  are  matters  of 
indifference.  The  only  whispering  which  ever  makes  itself 
heard  within  them,  when  these  topics  are  suggested  for  notice, 
is  that  of  the  homely  phrase,  —  Never  mind.  They  would 
as  lief  think  of  speculating  about  the  soul  —  past,  present, 
or  future  —  as  of  speculating  by  what  mode  of  death  one 
may  come  to  die,  and  in  what  grave,  if  it  be  in  a  grave,  one's 
body  may  come  to  lie.     We  shall  all  know  in  time. 

There  are  two  provisos  with  which  it  may  be  well,  before 
ending,  to  guard  our  meaning.  It  will  be  readily  understood 
that  in  insisting  on  a  really  subjective  synthesis  —  that  is, 


40  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

the  regarding  of  systematic  knowledge  as  a  mental  creation, 
dealing  with  sensations,  the  internal  grouping  of  phenomena, 
and  not  as  objective  truth  and  real  order  of  external  things  — ■ 
we  do  not  for  an  instant  accept  as  knowledge  unverified 
hypotheses  or  conceptions  which  have  not  been  shown  by 
scientific  demonstration  strictly  to  correspond  with  the  im- 
pressions of  sense.  No  theory,  however  plausible,  belongs 
to  knowledge  until  it  is  shown  to  be  capable  of  fitting  all 
the  accessible  phenomena. 

It  may  be  asked,  What  is  the  test  of  demonstration?  How 
are  hypotheses  to  be  verified?  There  is  no  absolute  test. 
We  never  are  in  the  abstract  certain  that  experience  may  not 
modify  our  conceptions.  And  there  is  no  single  test.  The 
sciences  are  many  and  disparate ;  each  has  its  own  appro- 
priate tests,  its  own  method,  its  peculiar  logic.  If  we  are 
asked  what  is  the  real  canon  of  sound  demonstration,  we 
must  answer.  It  is  found  in  the  general  logic  of  the  sciences, 
which  is  a  vast  and  composite  creation.  To  look  for  any 
single  and  final  test  of  proof  in  science  is  as  foolish  as  to  ex- 
pect such  a  test  in  practical  life.  Science  is  only  the  sys- 
tematic form  of  spontaneous  good  sense. 

Secondly,  it  will  be  as  readily  understood  that  in  insisting 
on  the  relativity  of  knowledge  to  the  extent  of  denying  any 
mathematical  proof  that  there  is  any  objective  existence,  or 
that  there  really  are  any  objective  laws,  we  do  in  the  practical 
workshop  of  Philosophy  accept  both  notions  fully.  That 
logic  never  can  establish  the  reality  of  an  external  world  is 
incontestable.  Whether  in  the  Idealism  of  Berkeley,  or  in 
the  scepticism  of  Hume,  there  is  no  logical  answer  to  their 
reasoning.  The  objective  reality  of  the  world  cannot  be 
proved.  It  will  be  seen  that  in  the  foregoing  pages,  whilst 
this  doctrine  is  admitted,  an  objective  world  of  phenomena 
is  constantly  assumed.     As  a  philosophical  artifice,  indeed, 


THE  SUBJECTIVE   SYNTHESIS  4I 

and  whilst  dealing  with  the  absolute  schools,  we  may  very 
fairly  use  the  profoundly  luminous  argument  of  the  idealists 
to  establish  the  inherently  relative  character  of  all  our  ideas. 
It  is  one  of  the  many  grounds  on  which  the  doctrine  rests. 
All  ideas,  all  thought,  all  knowledge,  are  relative,  and  there- 
fore in  one  sense  subjective. 

But  having  once,  as  a  preliminary  axiom  of  thought,  es- 
tablished the  complete  relativity  of  all  ideas,  we  cease  to 
follow  out  a  theory  which  would  become  a  barren  puzzle 
if  pressed  into  active  service.  Admitting  that  logic  cannot 
prove  an  objective  world  to  exist,  we  rest  nothing  on  that 
doctrine,  except  as  it  assists  us  in  establishing  the  relativity 
of  all  knowledge.  But  all  ideas  once  firmly  recognised  as 
being  relative,  the  grand  eternal  contrast  of  all  Philosophy 
comes  in,  of  the  I  and  the  Not  /,  the  strictly  subjective,  and  the 
apparently  objective,  our  ideas  of  what  we  feel  to  be  ourselves, 
our  ideas  of  what  appears  to  be  without  us.  And  this  grand 
dualism  of  thought  is  the  condition  of  all  reasoning  and  all 
knowledge.  We  must  reason  and  act  as  if  there  were  an  ex- 
ternal world,  and  as  if  there  were,  and  we  could  know,  general 
and  constant  laws.  They  offer  a  boundless  and  a  fruitful  field, 
capable  of  taxing  and  rewarding  all  our  intelligence  and  all 
our  energies.  But  everything  depends  on  our  recognising 
as  the  substratum  of  our  philosophy,  that  all  knowledge  is 
relative;  relative  in  respect  of  its  having  no  absolute  cer- 
tainty, and  relative  as  respects  its  harmonising  with  the 
mental  and  moral  nature  of  man. 


Ill 

SYNTHESIS 

There  are  a  few,  a  very  few,  technical  terms,  of  classical 
and  scientific  origin,  which  Positivism  must  at  any  cost  force 
upon  public  attention  till  they  become  quite  familiar  and 
natural.  Every  scheme  of  thought  which  presents  new  ideas 
that  it  seeks  to  popularise  must  resort  to  a  certain  number 
of  new  terms.  All  religious  systems  have  done  this:  all 
philosophical  and  sociological  movements,  and  every  new 
school  of  opinion ;  even  a  little  knot  of  aesthetes  who  affect 
the  cult  of  the  Decadent  —  all  have  their  symbolic  phrases. 

The  Christian  religionists  have  inundated  language, 
even  popular  language,  with  such  terms  as  Atonement,  Tran- 
substantiation,  and  Prevenient  Grace ;  till  children  come  to 
talk  about  Predestination,  Baptism,  Confirmation,  and  Sacra- 
ments. Indeed  the  Christian  religion  could  not  be  taught 
or  worked  without  the  use  of  such  highly  technical  terms  as 
Sacrament,  Trinity,  and  Grace.  The  evolutionists  have 
forced  on  the  public  an  entire  lexicon  of  special  terms,  so 
that  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer's  philosophy  would  seem  to  an 
unlearned  reader  of  the  last  generation  to  be  a  book  written 
in  a  learned  and  unknown  tongue.  The  economists, 
the  socialists,  the  artists,  have  their  peculiar  indispensable 
phrases.  It  is  a  practice  which  easily  becomes  an  affectation : 
but  up  to  a  certain  degree  it  is  unavoidable.  Nothing  could 
be  sillier  than  Mr.  Ruskin's  obscurantist  horror  of  scientific 
terms,  driving  him  to  use  fantastic  and  unintelligible  Biblical 

42 


SYNTHESIS  43 

and  poetical  tropes  to  express,  in  an  obscure  rigmarole,  an 
idea  which  can  be  accurately  connoted  by  a  beautiful  Greek 
compound.  Positivism  does  not  require  more  than  a  dozen 
of  such  terms  (and  no  one  of  them  is  strange  to  scientific 
thinkers) ;  but  these  few  must  be  made  quite  familiar.  The 
most  important,  the  most  indispensable,  of  these  is  Synthesis. 

Not  that  either  the  term,  synthesis,  or  the  thing  it  denotes, 
are  at  all  novel  or  strange.  It  is  simply  that  Positivism  must 
make  the  term  itself  as  familiar  to  the  unlearned  as  sacra- 
ment and  grace;  and  that  it  has  to  give  a  very  greatly  increased 
force  to  the  paramount  value  of  Synthesis.  Indeed,  Synthesis 
is  almost  Religion;  and,  if  it  is  not  quite  equivalent  to  Re- 
ligion, it  covers  the  intellectual  and  theoretical  side  of  Reli- 
gion, and  is  Religion,  so  far  as  Religion  is  not  expression  or 
action.  Positivism  claims  to  be  a  scientific  Philosophy  is- 
suing forth  into  a  moral  and  religious  scheme  for  the  entire 
conduct  of  life  —  public  and  private,  personal  and  social. 
It  aims  at  establishing  a  permanent  harmony  between  thought, 
feeling,  and  action.  That  is  to  say,  its  key-note  is  the  need 
for  some  complete  Synthesis  of  life.  This  means  organic 
principles  adequate  to  weld  into  one  common  life  our  in- 
tellectual, our  affective,  and  our  active  propensities.  The 
anarchy  and  the  failures  we  see  around  us  arise  from  this: 
that  our  science  is  not  inspired  by  religion,  that  our  religion  is 
not  founded  on  science,  that  our  conduct  is  imperfectly  guided 
either  by  religion  or  by  science.  The  paramount  conception 
of  Auguste  Comte  is  the  Synthesis,  or  harmonising  all  these 
sides  of  human  life. 

Since  its  field  is  so  wide,  Positivism  is  forced  to  deal  with 
disparate  topics  side  by  side  and  on  a  common  scheme. 
This  forms  the  main  difficulty  which  it  has  to  encounter, 
and  explains  the  antipathy  which  it  arouses  in  the  specialist 
schools  of  the  day.     Our  age  is  one  of  Analysis  — of  fissipa- 


44  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

rous  research.     The  Positive  scheme  is  a  search  for  Synthesis 

—  a  combination  of  knowledge  with  sympathy  and  with 
action.  The  central  idea  of  Positivism  is  simply  this :  that, 
until  our  dominant  convictions  can  be  got  into  one  plane  with 
our  deepest  affections  and  also  with  our  practical  energies 

—  until  our  most  sacred  emotions  have  been  correlated  with 
our  root  beliefs  and  also  with  our  noblest  ambition,  —  that  is, 
until  one  great  object  is  ever  present  to  intellect,  and  to  heart, 
and  to  energy  —  all  at  once  —  human  life  can  never  be 
healthy  or  sound. 

They  entirely  mistake  it  who  suppose  Positivism  to  be 
merely  a  novel  mode  of  satisfying  man's  inherent  craving 
for  some  object  of  Devotion  —  who  think  that  its  aim  is  to 
replace  God  by  Humanity  and  to  substitute  human  Saints 
for  Christ  —  that  it  is,  as  some  jesters  have  said,  an  Athe- 
istical kind  of  Salvation  Army.  That  is  mere  ribaldry.  All 
external  acts  of  worship  are  to  the  rational  Positivist  secon- 
dary details  and  variable  conventions,  as  to  which  they  are 
content  to  wait.  No  scheme  of  personal  Salvation  in  Heaven 
can  be  compared  with  a  synthesis  of  practical  life  on  this 
earth. 

Nor  are  they  less  mistaken  who  suppose  that  the  end  of 
Positivism  is  to  clear  up  some  philosophical  conundrums : 
to  tabulate  the  sciences  to  the  satisfaction  of  learned- spe- 
cialists, or  to  arrive  at  useful  truths  in  a  new  and  compendious 
way.  It  entirely  adopts  the  great  maxim  of  the  first  of  phi- 
losophers —  " not  to  know  —  hut  to  act.'"  This  is  the  practical 
motto  of  Positivism  as  it  was  of  Aristotle's  ethical  system. 

And  it  would  be  as  great  an  error  to  suppose  Positivism 
to  be  merely  a  new  phase  of  Socialism,  a  mere  social  economy 
of  any  kind ;  that  its  business  is  to  supersede  existing  society 
by  another  social  organisation  warranted  to  remedy  all  present 
evils,  and  to  found  a  social  millennium.     Positivism  insists 


S\'NTHESIS  45 

that  our  social  economy  is  the  result  of  defective  knowledge, 
neglect  of  moral  and  religious  teaching,  and  anarchical  habits 
of  egoistic  life.  And  the  only  remedy  is  the  consensus  of  an 
organised  philosophy,  a  reformed  morality,  and  a  permanent 
religion. 

Positivism  takes  up  each  of  these  subjects  in  turn  :  spiritual, 
scientific,  political ;  but  it  mainly  insists  on  a  convergence 
of  them  all  —  i.e.  on  a  synthesis.  Reformers  treat  the  organ- 
ism —  man,  and  the  organism  —  society,  as  if  men  were 
nothing  but  brain,  others  as  if  they  were  nothing  but  feeling, 
others  as  if  human  life  were  only  action.  They  treat  society 
as  if  its  sole  business  were  knowledge,  or  politics,  or  morality, 
or  industry,  or  art,  or  worship.  All  current,  political,  all 
social,  all  religious  movements  extant  are  sectional :  avowedly 
concerned  with  one  side  of  life. 

Positivism  aims  at  being  comprehensive,  complete,  and 
synthetic.  It  is  at  once  a  scheme  of  Education,  a  form  of 
Religion,  a  school  of  Philosophy,  a  method  of  Government, 
and  a  phase  of  Socialism.  To  define  it  in  terms  of  any  one  of 
these,  or  to  describe  it  as  being  any  one  more  than  the  others, 
is  to  mislead.  There  is  no  royal  road  to  its  understanding. 
It  cannot  be  put  in  a  nutshell,  or  analysed  on  a  sheet  of  paper. 
It  must  grow  into  our  conscience  and  sink  into  our  conceptions 
by  reflection  and  by  experience.  Its  strength  lies  in  the  cor- 
respondence of  its  parts,  and  its  aptness  to  meet  the  most 
different  conditions ;  in  its  power  to  calm  the  conflict  within 
man's  composite  nature ;  and  in  its  mastery  over  the  storms 
which  sweep  across  our  intricate  society.  It  can  be  set  forth 
only  by  presenting  it  in  a  great  variety  of  contrasted  aspects ; 
and  its  power  to  enforce  conviction  on  widely  difi"erent  minds, 
resides  not  in  any  single  effect  that  it  produces,  but  in  the 
convergence  which  it  evolves  out  of  heterogeneous  and  chaotic 
elements.     This  it  does  by  the  magic  of  synthesis. 


IV 

THE  THREE  GREAT  SYNTHESES 

The  controversies  which  have  been  aroused  by  Mr.  Bal- 
four's Foundations  oj  Belief  —  especially  the  reply  by  Mr. 
Herbert  Spencer  in  the  Fortnightly  Review  1895  —  afford 
a  convenient  text  for  stating  again  in  the  light  of  modern  phil- 
osophical discussion  the  Positivist  scheme  of  philosophic 
Synthesis,  or  co-ordination  of  ultimate  principles.  There  are 
now  before  the  world  three  such  dominant  schemes,  each  in 
its  way  covering  the  whole  field  of  religious  or  synthetic  phi- 
losophy. Each  of  the  three  has  been  sufficiently  set  forth  in 
recent  discussions.     The  three  syntheses  are  :  — 

1.  The  Absolute  Theological  synthesis  —  i.e.  the  current 
orthodox  religious  philosophy,  which,  for  the  occasion,  is 
sufficiently  represented  by  Mr.  Balfour. 

2.  The  Absolute  Scientific  synthesis  —  i.e.  the  evolutionary 
scheme  of  the  Universe  —  which  is  adequately  represented 
by  Mr.  Spencer,  its  principal  exponent  and  author. 

3.  The  Relative  Scientific  synthesis  —  i.e.  the  human  and 
planetary  scheme  of  religious  philosophy  on  the  basis  of  posi- 
tive science,  which  is  exclusively  taught  by  Auguste  Comte. 

These  three  syntheses  do  really  cover  the  whole  field  of 
debate ;  and  all  the  varieties  of  religious  philosophy  may  be 
brought  under  one  or  other  of  these  heads.  No  doubt  the 
Absolute  Theology  has  infinite  gradations  from  that  of  the 
Pope  to  Dr.  Martineau's,  from  that  of  Islam  to  that  of  Mr. 
Stead.     But  they  all  agree  in  this  —  that  there  is  some  Su- 

46 


THE  THREE   GREAT   S^TSTHESES  47 

preme  Will  intelligible  to  Man  and  in  contact  with  Man,  by 
whom  the  entire  Universe  and  all  things  in  it  physical,  mental, 
and  moral,  have  been  from  the  first  ordained,  and  are,  and 
to  infinite  time  will  be,  daily  co-ordinated  and  ordered. 
Again,  the  Absolute  Scientific  synthesis  covers  all  the  at- 
tempts to  explain,  on  scientific  bases,  the  reign  of  uniform 
Law  throughout  the  Universe  and  the  co-ordination  of  things 
within  it.  The  Positive  Synthesis  covers  all  schemes  which 
deliberately  limit  philosophy  and  religion  to  Ivlan  and  this 
planet,  and  seek  for  a  merely  relative  co-ordination  of  our 
knowledge  and  our  conduct  in  the  sphere  of  things  that  Man 
can  come  to  know,  and  to  the  course  of  conduct  which  is 
useful  to  man. 

There  cannot  indeed  be  more  than  these  three  general 
syntheses  in  the  widest  sense.  For,  though  there  is  a  Meta- 
physical Theology,  and  possibly  a  Metaphysical  Science, 
Metaphysics,  or  quasi-scientific  hypotheses  in  an  unverified 
condition,  are  merely  forms  of  compromise,  hybrids,  bastard 
types,  as  the  Athanasian  Creed  would  put  it,  touching  Theol- 
ogy as  dispensing  with  proof,  and  touching  science  as  pre- 
tending to  its  terms.  Absolute  and  Relative  cover  the  whole 
field  of  logic;  and  so  also  do  Theology  and  Science,  if  in 
Theology  we  include  all  arbitrary  hypotheses,  and  in  Science 
we  include  all  forms  of  positive  demonstration.  There  can 
hardly  be  a  relative  theological  synthesis  of  a  serious  kind. 
For,  though  negroes  and  esoteric  Buddhists  might  invent 
a  system  of  divine  emanations  and  decrees  limited  to  this 
earth,  or  even  to  particular  spots  and  families,  such  crude 
superstitions  could  hardly  be  reckoned  as  a  philosophy. 
There  are  —  and  there  can  only  be  —  three  great  typical 
forms  of  general  synthesis:  (i)  The  Absolute  Theology  of 
God  or  Gods  creating  and  ruling  the  Universe;  (2)  Some 
Absolute  scheme  of  scientific  generalisations  pervading  and 


48  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

explaining  the  Universe;  (3)  The  Relative  Synthesis  of 
positive  science  limited  in  space  to  the  earth  and  our  system, 
limited  in  time  to  the  historic  record,  and  limited  in  aim  to 
human  conditions  and  requirements. 

It  is  not  proposed  now  to  discuss  Mr.  Balfour's  book  — 
The  Foundations  of  Belief  —  except  as  it  presents  in  a  con- 
venient form  the  average  type  of  the  looser  theology.  Mr. 
Spencer,  like  Professor  Huxley,  like  Dr.  Martineau,  has  shovi^n 
what  a  mere  parody  of  his  opinions  that  book  offers  to  the 
world  under  the  name  of  Naturalism.  Mr.  Balfour  is  a 
most  graceful  writer,  a  most  ingenious  debater,  and  a  highly 
interesting  personality  of  great  subtlety  and  wide  culture. 
But  his  philosophic  level  is  that  of  a  popular  preacher  in  a 
University  pulpit.  As  such  we  may  fairly  take  him  as  a  really 
authoritative  type  of  modern  theological  adaptation.  Mr. 
Spencer  had  no  difficulty  in  showing  how  completely  Mr. 
Balfour  misconceived  the  Evolution  Synthesis,  how  loose  is 
his  own  logic  in  attack,  and  how  vague,  and  yet  preposterous, 
are  the  hypotheses  which  he  calls  "the  certitudes  of  religion." 
Mr.  Spencer  gave  us  a  complete  exposure  of  "Mr.  Balfour's 
Dialectics";  but  Mr.  Spencer's  own  Absolute  Synthesis 
has  been  abundantly  explained  in  his  elaborate  and  volu- 
minous works,  and  we  shall  find  no  real  difficulty  in  stating  his 
conception  of  Evolution  as  the  pervading  law  of  the  Universe. 

Mr.  Balfour  is  master  of  a  style  of  really  rare  beauty  and 
charm,  and  his  interesting  mode  of  eloquence  is  curiously 
adapted  to  his  mysterious  and  mighty  theme.  But  the  vague- 
ness inseparable  from  this  type  of  eloquence  makes  it  some- 
times difficult  to  grasp  his  meaning.  Almost  every  idea  he 
offers  us  is  clothed  in  metaphor  or  epigram  —  the  epigram 
being  bright,  and  the  metaphor  being  suggestive,  graceful, 
and  at  times  almost  rising  to  the  level  of  poetry.  But  in 
philosophy  metaphors  are  dangerous  resources.     It  was  said 


THE   THREE   GREAT   SYNTHESES  49 

of  John  Austin  that  he  weeded  every  metaphor  out  of  his 
Jurisprudence  until  his  sentences  became  repulsively  dry. 
Mr.  Balfour's  sentences  are  redolent  and  brilliant  with  flowers 
of  metaphor,  until  we  lose  sight  of  the  ground  beneath  them. 
And  in  this  allusive  style  it  is  not  quite  evident  what  the 
terms  exactly  mean.  He  uses  "natural  science"  as  if  it 
covered  sociology,  psychology,  and  even  philosophy;  he 
uses  "phenomena"  as  if  they  were  limited  to  the  facts  of 
physical  nature;  and  he  uses  "perception"  as  if  it  meant 
sometimes  the  report  of  the  senses  and  sometimes  the  sole 
instrument  of  scientific  knowledge. 

As  becomes  a  professional  "doubter,"  he  makes  so  profuse 
a  use  of  negatives  that  it  is  at  times  difficult  to  disentangle 
them,  and  now  and  then  it  looks  as  if  he  said  the  exact  con- 
trary of  what  he  means.  As  in  Mr.  Henry  James's  critical 
essays,  we  have  to  count  the  negatives,  in  order  to  see  if  they 
are  odd  or  even  in  number.  Here  is  a  case.  jSIr.  Balfour 
writes  (p.  292)  —  "It  must  not  be  supposed  that  I  intend  to 
deny,  either  that  it  is  our  business  to  'reconcile'  all  beliefs, 
so  far  as  possible,  into  a  self-consistent  whole,  or  that,  because 
a  perfectly  coherent  philosophy  cannot  as  yet  be  attained, 
it  is,  in  the  meanwhile,  a  matter  0}  complete  indifference  how 
many  contradictions  and  obscurities  we  admit  into  our  pro- 
visional system."  What  does  this  mean?  Mr.  Balfour 
must  not  be  supposed  to  deny,  i.e.,  he  affirms  two  things  — 
the  first,  that  we  have  to  "reconcile"  beliefs  —  the  second 
he  surely  means  not  to  affirm,  but  to  disclaim.  As  the  words 
stand,  he  asserts,  that  it  is  a  matter  of  complete  indifference 
to  him  how  many  contradictions  and  obscurities  he  admits 
into  his  system  !  This  sentence  is  plainly  a  merely  verbal 
slip.  Or  that  must  mean  or  to  affirm  that.  But  when  one 
uses  a  tangle  of  negatives  unintended  results  will  arise. 
Many  of  his  readers  will  agree  with  this  curious  confession 

£ 


50  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

of  his :  but  does  it  lie  in  Mr.  Balfour's  mouth  to  make  so 
monstrous  an  admission  of  confusion  and  fogginess?  This 
is  indeed  the  scepticism  which  he  so  oddly  puts  into  the  mouth 
of  "Naturalism,"  and  hence  of  Positivism,  when  he  says 
(p.  299)  "I  cannot  either  securely  doubt  my  own  certainties 
or  he  certain  about  my  own  doubts J^  This  is  verily  the 
Doubter's  nemesis ! 

The  essence  of  Mr.  Balfour's  argument  is  one  which  has 
great  interest  for  Positivists,  and  indeed  is  an  argument 
which  they  have  constantly  employed  to  a  very  different  end. 
He  says  that,  since  "things  in  themselves"  are  unknowable 
and  even  unthinkable,  since  the  "Absolute"  and  the  "In- 
finite" are  beyond  our  grasp,  —  since  the  law  of  universal 
causation  cannot  help  us  to  a  Primal  Cause,  and  cannot  prove 
itself,  —  since  the  Spencerian  Synthesis  rests  on  a  sublime 
background  of  Unknowable,  —  since  the  Darwinian  evolu- 
tion cannot  explain  the  origin  of  Duty,  or  of  Beauty,  or  of 
Devotion,  —  since  every  Absolute  Synthesis  rests  ultimately 
on  a  mystery,  —  since  science  breaks  down  in  the  task  of 
rewriting  the  Book  of  Genesis  and  of  expounding  the  origin 
of  the  Universe,  —  since  atheism,  materialism,  and  monism 
fail  to  account  for  the  evolution  of  all  that  is  noblest  in  the 
human  soul  —  why  not  admit  (says  Mr.  Balfour)  that  the 
hypothesis  of  a  Creator,  the  possibility  of  a  Providence,  and 
the  divine  entity  of  a  human  soul  "without  body  parts,  or  pas- 
sions," may  be  mysteries  no  more  dilScult  to  swallow  than 
Mr.  Spencer's  Unknowable  or  Mr.  Darwin's  evolution  of 
morality?  And  they  are  certainly  far  more  soothing  to  the 
truly  religious  spirit  of  good  Churchmen.  And  having  come 
to  this  comfortable  conclusion  of  "Scepticism  all  round," 
Mr.  Balfour  goes  down  to  Westminster  and  fights  tooth  and 
nail  for  that  odious  remnant  of  sacerdotal  bigotry,  the  epis- 
copal Church  in  Wales ! 


THE  THREE  GREAT   SYNTHESES  5 1 

Now  this  elaborate  argument  of  Mr.  Balfour's  as  to  the 
insoluble  mystery  of  ultimate  ideas  and  of  Primal  Causes, 
as  to  the  confusion  involved  in  any  materialistic  origin  of  the 
Universe,  is  not  at  all  new.  Mr.  Balfour  has  restated  the 
old  dilemmas  with  grace,  wit,  and  subtlety,  although  he  has 
not  strengthened  them  a  point.  But  the  curious  thing  is, 
that  the  entire  set  of  these  objections,  most  of  which  have 
divided  philosophers  for  a  century,  was  first  cast  into  an 
organic  and  consistent  scheme,  and  was  first  made  the  basis 
of  a  new  philosophy  by  no  one  but  by  Auguste  Comte  himself. 
It  is  now  just  eighty-five  years  since  Comte  first  published 
his  scheme  of  a  new  Positive  Philosophy  —  which  rested 
as  its  basis  on  the  futility  of  the  metaphysical,  and  materialis- 
tic solutions  of  the  Universe  which  Mr.  Balfour  now  describes 
as  the  creed  of  Naturalism,  and  of  Positivism.  Whether 
these  solutions  or  any  of  them  are  the  creed  of  "Naturalism" 
does  not  concern  us.  True  Positivism  (much  as  he  may  be 
surprised  to  learn  it)  rests  upon  a  profound  sense  of  the 
futility  of  those  very  dogmas  of  which  Mr.  Balfour  has  again 
very  cleverly  made  mince-meat. 

The  difference  between  us,  however,  is  this.  Philosophic 
Doubt  "all  round"  drives  Mr.  Balfour  into  the  arms  of  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury  and  the  transcendent  "contra- 
dictions and  obscurities"  —  of  the  Athanasian  creed.  There 
he  can  revel  in  "complete  indifi'crcnce"  to  reason  and  to 
sense,  neither  "securely  doubting  his  own  certainties,"  nor 
being  "certain  about  his  own  doubts."  It  drove  Comte, 
and  it  drives  us,  to  say  —  Away  with  these  metaphysical 
conundrums,  with  these  impotent  thcogonies  and  gcogonies, 
with  all  these  yearnings  after  a  knowledge  of  the  Universe, 
and  with  all  these  Absolute  philosophies  of  the  All  as  it  is, 
and  the  Infinite  Cause  and  Ruler  of  the  All  —  and  let  us 
work  out  man's  salvation  upon  earth  with  all  the  real  know- 


52  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

ledge  about  it  and  about  himself  which  can  be  proved  by 
practical  logic  to  give  us  definite  results  so  far  as  we  yet 
know !  That  is  the  Positivist  syllogism  upon  the  basis  of 
the  very  premises  that  we  are  ready  to  accept  quite  as  fully 
as  Mr.  Balfour  can.  Philosophic  Doubt  as  to  "things  in 
themselves"  and  Absolute  Causes  leads  Mr.  Balfour  to  give 
a  "  provisional  assent  "to  theological  hypotheses  as  not  more 
extravagant  than  those  of  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer.  It  leads 
us  to  give  a  "positive  assent"  to  what  philosophy,  science, 
and  experience  can  show  us  to  be  proved  about  "things  as 
they  are,"  about  this  world  and  man  as  we  find  them.  And 
we  prefer  this  positive  knowledge  and  these  practical  efforts 
to  merely  comfortable  hopes  and  the  venerable  Mahatmas 
revealed  to  Jews  and  Syrians  two  thousand  years  ago. 

Comte  objected  to  Ontology  in  all  its  forms  so  violently  that 
he  used  the  term  Metaphysician  as  a  reproach,  and  he  said 
the  philosophy  of  a  Congo  negro  showed  more  good  sense 
than  all  the  metaphysics  of  Germany.  This  may  have  been  an 
extreme  epigram ;  but  such  a  book  as  Mr.  G.  H.  Lewes's  His- 
tory of  Philosophy  follows  much  the  same  line  in  its  criticism 
of  all  ontological  speculation  as  does  Mr.  Balfour.  Now,  Mr. 
Lewes's  criticism  of  Ontology  leads  him  directly  to  be  satisfied 
with  the  Positive  Philosophy ;  and  his  later  works  give  a  more 
or  less  positivist  answer  to  the  various  problems  of  ontology, 
causation,  and  ultimate  grounds  of  belief,  now  treated  by  Mr. 
Balfour.  But  Mr.  Lewes's  solution  is  very  far  from  being  an 
appeal  to  rally  round  the  Church,  which  is  what  Mr.  Balfour's 
book  practically  ends  in  being,  but  it  is,  that  we  must  learn  to 
acquiesce  in  the  Unknowable  Infinite  and  the  insoluble  aenig- 
mas  of  all  beginnings  and  of  all  ends,  including  those  of  Earth 
and  of  Man,  not  as  being  the  field  of  Religion,  but  as  the  cir- 
cumambient aether,  in  which  thesolid  massof  man's  knowledge 
floats.     That  is  in  the  main  the  Positivist  conclusion. 


THE  THREE  GREAT   S\T^THESES  53 

Mr.  Balfour's  whole  argument  comes  to  this :  —  that  as  the 
heterodox  dogmas  have  their  own  dilemmas,  why  need  we 
stumble  over  the  dilemmas  of  orthodoxy?  But  how  feeble  and 
how  treacherous  a  weapon  is  this  !  That  is  what  Rome  has  al- 
ways said  to  the  Protestant  —  the  Trinity  is  so  big  a  mystery, 
why  need  you  gasp  over  Transubstantiation?  The  Trinita- 
rian says  to  the  Unitarian  —  If  you  admit  a  Creator,  why  not 
admit  an  Incarnation?  The  Christian  says  to  the  Deist,  Until 
you  have  explained  the  origin  of  your  God,  you  need  not  parade 
difficulties  about  Miracles.  Everybody  can  use  the  same  argu- 
ment, everybody  does  use  it,  —  Jews,  Musulmans,  Buddhists, 
Mahdists,  Medicine-men,  Spookists  and  Theosophists — all  say 
—  Our  mystery  is  not  more  mysterious  than  Christian  Incar- 
nations or  scientific  Unknowables.  Mr.  Stead  and  Mrs.  Besant 
say — If  you  cannot  explain  the  mystery  of  revelation,  why  do 
you  mock  at  telepathy  and  Mahatmas?    Why  indeed  ? 

It  is  a  very  queer  argument  on  which  to  base  the  Christian 
creed,  that,  as  we  may  have  grounds  for  doubting  the  objec- 
tive reality  of  an  external  world,  may  not  the  creeds  be  hardly 
more  doubtful?  Like  a  new  Athanasius,  Mr.  Balfour  rises 
up  to  say,  "Since  there  is  not  one  incomprehensible,  but 
three  (and  perhaps  many)  incomprehensibles,  not  one  un- 
created, but  three  (and  perhaps  many)  uncreated,  the  logi- 
cal objections  to  an  incomprehensible  and  to  an  uncreated 
now  fall  to  the  ground  !"  He,  therefore,  that  will  be  saved 
must  feel  it  "a  matter  of  complete  indifTerence  how  many 
contradictions  and  obscurities"  he  admits  into  his  creed. 
But  because  many  irrational  answers  have  been  given  to 
irrational  questions,  it  is  not  open  to  the  rational  man  ihere- 
}ore  to  adopt  that  one  of  the  answers  which  he  finds  to  be  most 
soothing.  The  Positivist  reply  is,  Leave  the  irrational  ques- 
tion alone,  and  occupy  your  energies  and  thoughts  with 
practicable  and  rational  problems. 


54  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

As  in  things  intellectual  Mr.  Balfour  falls  back  upon  gen- 
eral scepticism,  so  in  things  practical  his  mainstay  is  found 
in  a  sub-cynical  pessimism.  Apart  from  the  purposes  of 
creation,  mankind  is  "a  race  with  conscience  enough  to 
feel  that  it  is  vile,  and  intelligence  enough  to  know  that  it  is 
insignificant."  This  earth  will  ere  long  be  a  lifeless  void, 
and  everything  will  be  as  if  it  had  never  been.  What  can 
any  one  of  us  do  that  is  truly  useful  or  permanent?  Why 
should  we  strive  in  vain ;  what  can  matter  any  earthly  achieve- 
ment ?  And  so  forth  in  the  strain  of  Ecclesiastes  the  Preacher 
—  Vanity  of  Vanities,  all  is  Vanity !  This  language  was 
very  well  in  the  fin  de  siecle  Wertherism  of  an  Alexandrian 
Jew,  or  in  the  Imitation  of  a  mediaeval  monk.  But  how  oddly 
it  sits  upon  the  leader  of  His  Majesty's  Opposition  !  If  the 
human  race  is  so  vile,  and  human  effort  so  futile,  why  not 
retire  into  a  hermitage,  weep  and  pray  till  God  vouchsafe 
to  take  us  to  Himself?  Even  Irish  Nationalists  can  hardly 
be  viler  than  the  rest  of  us.  If  the  human  race  be  so  con- 
temptible, why  should  we  care  for  our  countr}^,  our  family,  or 
even  this  Empire?  If  it  will  be  "all  the  same  a  hundred 
years  hence,"  why  should  statesmen,  preachers,  thinkers, 
toil  and  moil  at  all?  If  man  be  this  utter  Yahoo  and  earth 
this  speck  of  dust,  why  should  Mr.  Balfour  wear  himself 
nightly  in  doing  the  dirty  work  of  Irish  landlords  and  London 
aldermen,  and  in  battling  for  the  privileges  of  Prelacy  in 
Wales? 

And  all  this  scepticism  and  cynicism  is  to  redound  to  the 
honour  and  glory  of  God  !  We  are  such  utter  beasts,  says 
Mr.  Balfour,  that  God  must  have  created  us  in  His  own 
image  !  This  life  is  such  a  farce  that  there  must  be  a  Heaven, 
and  let  us  hope  a  Hell !  Since  nothing  is  really  true,  nothing 
can  be  too  preposterous  to  believe,  if  it  gives  us  consolation 
to  believe  it.     If  the  child  cries  for  the  Moon,  surely  it  must 


THE  THREE  GREAT   SYNTHESES  55 

have  it.  If  men  like  to  go  to  Heaven,  to  Heaven  they  shall 
go.  At  any  rate,  if  they  still  cling  to  earth,  they  must  be 
taught  that  earth  is  little  more  than  a  temporary  hell,  where 
we  phantoms  squeak  and  gibber  till  the  other  place  is  hot 
enough.  Such  are  the  unspeakable  mercies  of  Omnipotent 
Goodness ! 

Well !  but  this  line  of  argument  would  equally  apply  to 
many  creeds  and  to  most  schemes  of  supernatural  salvation. 
If  "at  the  root  of  every  rational  process  there  lies  an  irrational 
process"  (p.  322),  if  "the  certitudes  of  science  lose  themselves 
in  depths  of  unfathomable  mystery"  (p.  288),  why  not  revert 
to  Plato's  "ideas,"  to  the  "music  of  the  spheres,"  the  trans- 
migration of  souls,  to  Transubstantiation,  to  Mahatmas, 
to  anything  we  find  ingenious  or  hopeful?  Musulmans, 
Buddhists,  Romanists,  and  Mormons  may  all  welcome  a 
theory  of  Revelation  based  on  the  radical  untrustworthiness 
of  human  Reason  and  the  mysterious  collapse  of  human 
Science.  But,  since  this  blight  of  doubt  afflicts  the  whole 
field  of  Man's  imaginations  and  convictions,  why  is  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury  to  get  the  benefit  of  the  doubt,  and  not 
the  Pope  or  Mrs.  Besant?  All  things  being  alike  doubtful, 
and  no  one  of  us  being  even  "certain  about  his  own  doubts," 
this  new  "Analogy"  leaves  it  open  to  every  man  to  believe 
just  what  catches  his  fancy;  he  can  give  "a  provisional 
assent"  to  anything,  however  irrational  it  may  seem;  he 
can  see  "the  preferential  action"  of  Providence  in  strength- 
ening the  defenders  of  the  British  empire ;  and,  in  the  com- 
munings of  his  own  secret  chamber,  each  of  us  can  please 
himself  in  recognising  "the  halting  expression  of  a  reality 
beyond  our  reach,  the  half-seen  vision  of  transcendent 
Truth"  (p.  219).     "Half-seen"  indeed  it  is! 

We  may  now  bring  out  some  of  the  contrasts,  some  of  the 
analogies,  the  points  of  contact,  of  correspondence,  of  op- 


56  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

position,  in  these  three  great  types  of  general  synthesis. 
It  will  be  very  instructive,  and,  to  those  who  know  little  of 
Positivism,  surprising  to  see  how  much  the  Positive  or  Human 
Synthesis  goes  hand  in  hand  with  the  Theological  Synthesis 
in  moral  and  spiritual  idea,  how  much  it  concedes  to  it  in 
intellectual  analysis,  and  how  completely  it  repudiates  those 
things  which  Theology  has  always  most  passionately  urged 
against  Materialism.  The  Relative  Synthesis  has  none  of 
those  over-ambitious,  unverifiable  generalisations,  so  incom- 
mensurate with  Man's  limited  intelligence,  which  Theology 
casts  in  the  teeth  of  the  Absolute  Synthesis  of  Science.  The 
Relative  Synthesis  cannot  be  charged  with  that  inhuman, 
unsympathetic,  unspiritual  tone  which  Theology  (not  un- 
justly) imputes  to  the  Absolute  Synthesis.  The  religion  and 
philosophy  of  Humanity  do  not  exhibit  "the  pitiless  glare" 
of  a  creed  presenting  "an  universal  flux  ordered  by  blind 
causation,"  and  all  the  other  horrid  phantoms  of  atheistic 
materialism,  effectively  paraded  by  the  eloquence  of  Mr. 
Balfour. 

One  of  the  central  points  of  combat  between  Theology 
and  Science,  ever  since  the  age  of  Galileo,  has  been  that 
Theology  is  anthropocentric,  whilst  Science  is  daily  showing 
us  the  infinitesimal  littleness  of  Man  in  the  Universe.  The- 
ology, says  Mr.  Spencer,  teaches  us  that  "the  Power  mani- 
fested in  thirty  millions  of  suns  made  a  bargain  with  Abra- 
ham," and,  he  might  add,  suffered  a  horrid  death  as  a  male- 
factor to  redeem  the  human  mites  on  one  minor  planet  re- 
volving in  the  train  of  one  minor  sun.  What,  says  Mr. 
Spencer,  is  human  civilisation  two  thousand  years  after  that 
transcendent  sacrifice?  And  what  has  God  done  for  the 
million  planets  revolving  round  the  thirty  millions  of  other 
suns?  Science,  he  says  very  truly,  can  accept  no  anthropo- 
centric or  geocentric  view  as  conclusive,  seeing  that  it  has  been 


THE  THREE  GREAT  S\7n'HESES  57 

building  up  for  centuries  a  mountain  of  observations  about 
forms  of  life  and  of  matter  having  no  conceivable  relation  to 
Man  or  being  actively  injurious  to  Man. 

The  answer  to  this,  attempted  by  Theology,  and  repeated 
by  Mr.  Balfour  with  a  sort  of  vague  quietism,  that  the  mystery 
of  the  Incarnation  makes  all  clear :  that  God  has  chosen  the 
infinitesimally  small  to  confound  the  infinitely  great  —  is 
hardly  above  the  level  of  a  fashionable  curate.  The  crux 
remains  insoluble.  In  face  of  the  infinity  of  the  Universe 
revealed  by  science  and  also  of  its  infinite  activity,  so  sub- 
limely incurious  of  Man,  or  so  ruthlessly  antagonistic  to  Man, 
the  old  tales  about  the  loving  fatherhood  of  the  Creator  and 
the  Divine  Humanity  of  his  Son  become  a  truly  comic  hyper- 
bole, which  no  shuflling  about  "preferential  action"  and 
"half-seen  visions  of  transcendent  Truth,"  can  commend  to 
honest  sense. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Infinity  in  space,  in  time,  and  in 
proportion  which  Science  reveals,  whilst  utterly  destructive 
of  any  anthropocentric  or  geocentric  scheme  of  theology, 
is  also  alien  to  the  very  basis  of  religion,  of  duty,  and  of  ac- 
tivity, in  so  far  as  it  reduces  humanity  to  the  level  of  the  worm, 
and  converts  his  earthly  abode  into  a  casual  atom.  In  kill- 
ing theology,  science  has  paralysed  religion :  for  the  noblest 
attributes  of  the  human  spirit,  the  inspiration  to  active  con- 
duct, and  the  power  to  frame  synthetic  conceptions,  are  all 
alike  endangered.  The  scientific  specialist  says,  "That  is 
no  affair  of  mine,  see  thou  to  that"  —  but  religion  and  phi- 
losophy both  feel  the  dilemma.  Mr.  Spencer  declares  that 
the  object  of  religion  is  the  Unknowable  —  a  formula  at 
which  even  agnostics  smile.  He  declares  that  the  basis  of 
philosophy  is  Evolution  —  alternate  "didcrentiation"  and 
"integration,"  and  so  forth,  through  his  famous  root  prin- 
ciples. 


58  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

The  ruck  of  scientific  specialists  are  not  concerned  with 
any  synthesis;  but  it  can  hardly  be  said  that  Mr.  Spencer's 
synthesis  of  Evolution  throughout  the  Universe  has  obtained 
any  general  or  even  M^ide  acceptance  amongst  philosophers. 
Agnostics  like  Professor  Huxley,  or  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen, 
entirely  disclaim  any  systematic  religion  other  than  that  of 
moral  conduct  and  honest  thought.  And  Mr.  Herbert 
Spencer  himself  plaintively  admits  that  the  Evolutionary 
Synthesis  of  the  Universe,  though  the  only  one  vi^hich  satisfies 
his  intellect,  is  far  from  being  a  consoling  or  an  inspiring 
creed.  In  the  close  of  his  reply  to  Mr.  Balfour  he  says  that 
"there  is  no  pleasure  in  the  consciousness  of  being  an  infini- 
tesimal bubble  on  a  globe  that  is  itself  infinitesimal  compared 
with  the  totality  of  things."  There  is  no  consolation  in  the 
thought  that  we  are  at  the  mercy  of  blind  forces,  he  says. 
"Contemplation  of  a  Universe  which  is  without  conceivable 
beginning  or  end,  and  without  intelligible  purpose,  yields  no 
satisfaction.'"  And  it  is  "a  regretful  inability"  that  Mr. 
Spencer  feels,  in  that  he  cannot  accept  the  interpretation  of 
Mr.  Balfour  and  his  fellow-theologians.  These  very  honest, 
very  pathetic,  very  significant  words  of  Mr.  Spencer  at  the 
close  of  his  philosophic  career  deserve  profound  attention. 

Mr.  Balfour  has  only  again,  for  the  hundredth  time,jput 
into  eloquent  and  passionate  form  the  sense  of  despair  and 
horror  experienced  by  the  ordinary  religious  man  and  woman 
when  confronted  with  this  blank,  this  chaotic,  this  merciless 
spectre  of  a  Universe  —  having  no  Power  to  protect  us  mites, 
no  loving  Being  to  love  and  revere,  no  order  to  trust  in,  no 
future  to  hope  for.  Now,  I  say  most  frankly,  that  in  this,  all 
my  sympathies  are  with  Mr.  Balfour  and  religious  men  and 
women.  I  go  much  further.  And  I  say  that  this  yearning 
for  a  Power  to  revere,  a  Being  to  love,  for  a  irovorSi  in  the 
moral  chaos  of  these  blind  forces,  is  a  normal  and  indestruc- 


THE  THREE  GREAT   SYNTHESES  59 

tible  instinct  of  humanity,  which  no  philosophy  and  no  science 
can  ever  drive  out.  Theology  meets  a  spontaneous  craving 
of  the  human  soul  which  Evolution  does  not  meet,  which 
Mr.  Spencer  mournfully  confesses  that  it  cannot  meet.  And, 
therefore,  I  say  it  without  hesitation  or  qualification,  the 
absolute  synthesis  of  the  Universe  as  proclaimed  by  science 
—  any  absolute  synthesis  of  the  Universe  whatever  —  fails 
to  satisfy  me,  and  even  fills  me  with  a  sense  of  moral  and 
spiritual  repulsion. 

Am  I  then  "on  the  side  of  the  angels,"  as  Mr.  Balfour's 
party  chief  used  to  say  ?  Certainly  not !  For,  the  relative 
synthesis  of  Humanity  offers  an  exit  out  of  this  almost  hope- 
less dilemma,  and  presents  us  with  a  final  eirenicon  between 
religion  and  science.  We  fully  adopt  the  demand  of  the 
religious  spirit  for  a  human  or  anthropomorphic,  sympathetic 
Providence,  for  a  world  of  order,  in  which  the  individual 
may  feel  protection,  permanence,  a  being  to  serve,  and  a 
future  after  death.  We  utterly  repudiate  the  childish  hy- 
potheses which  satisfied  Arab  sheikhs  and  hysterical  monks. 
On  the  other  hand,  we  fully  adopt  the  conclusions  of  science 
which  Mr.  Spencer  has  so  often  tabulated,  as  to  our  being 
but  infinitesimal  bubbles  on  an  infinitesimal  speck  of  dust, 
whirling  about  in  an  inconceivable  Universe,  itself  having 
no  intelligible  purpose  and  presenting  unfathomable  mys- 
teries. But  we  utterly  repudiate  the  dismal  suggestion  that  the 
business  of  man  is  to  contemplate  this  unfathomable  Universe, 
without  pretence  of  sympathy  or  hope  of  ever  reaching  to 
its  realities.  The  relative  synthesis  accepts  the  indestructible 
spirit  of  religion  and  also  the  irrefragable  teaching  of  science. 
It  rejects  the  guesses  of  theology :  it  rejects  the  inhuman 
nothingness  presented  by  a  blank  infmity  of  Evolution. 

What  is  the  solution?  It  is  this.  A  relative  synthesis 
admits  that  absolutely,  in  rerum  natitrd,  the  Earth  is  an  in- 


6o  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

finitesimal  bubble,  and  Man  a  very  feeble,  casual,  and 
faulty  organism.  Nothing  that  science  can  prove  about  the 
Universe  and  its  infinities,  or  about  Man  and  his  limitations, 
need  shock  or  disturb  us.  Our  reason  convinces  us  that  it 
is  as  near  the  real  truth  as  our  minds  can  as  yet  penetrate, 
—  and  that  is  enough.  But  relatively,  i.e.  in  relation  to  our 
intellectual  powers,  to  our  knowledge,  to  our  human  wants, 
to  our  powers  of  emotion  and  of  action,  relatively  —  this 
Earth  is  to  us  mites  the  true  centre  of  the  World,  and  Hu- 
manity is  far  the  noblest,  strongest,  most  humane,  most 
permanent  organism  that  we  can  prove  to  inhabit  it.  The 
Universe  is  all  very  grand,  but  it  is  a  mere  background ;  even 
the  Solar  System,  which  is  all  that  we  can  know  well,  and  all 
that  we  need  to  know  at  all,  is  only  the  environment  of  our 
human  lives ;  it  gives  us  the  soil  on  which  we  stand,  the  at- 
mosphere we  breathe. 

We  continue  to  increase  our  knowledge  of  Nature,  but 
we  feel  that  the  needs  of  Man  are  the  main  ends  of  knowledge. 
Philosophy,  morality,  religion,  again  resume  a  geocentric, 
an  anthropocentric  basis.  Our  synthesis  is  frankly  geo- 
centric, our  religion  is  frankly  anthropomorphic.  A  science 
which  is  not  normally  and  mainly  devoted  to  problems  of  this 
Earth  or  to  problems  of  human  nature,  is  always  in  danger  of 
losing  itself  in  idle  conundrums.  A  synthesis  which  pretends 
to  explain  and  correlate  the  Universe,  when  it  as  yet  transcends 
Man's  powers  to  explain  and  correlate  the  solar  system, 
is  in  danger  of  degenerating  into  a  pretentious  imposture. 
And  a  religion  which  is  not  truly  and  earnestly  anthropo- 
morphic, or  rather  entirely  human,  is  in  danger  of  becoming 
mere  dry  bones  and  logical  formula  —  indeed  of  being  no 
religion  at  all,  but  a  pretext  for  having  no  religion.  All  these 
dangers  to  science,  to  philosophy,  to  religion  are  avoided  by 
the  relative  or  human  and  earthly  synthesis  —  which  admits, 


THE  THREE   GREAT   SYNTHESES  6l 

as  freely  as  Mr.  Balfour  or  ]Mr.  Spencer,  that  absolutely,  in 
rerum  naturd,  the  Earth  is  a  bubble,  and  ]Man  is  a  mote; 
but  which  insists  that  for  purposes  of  human  progress  and 
happiness  we  must  think  and  act  as  if  the  world  revolved 
round  our  globe,  and  Man  was  its  master  and  its  ruler. 

The  consequences  of  this  great  revolution  in  thought,  the 
substitution  of  the  relative  for  the  absolute  philosophy,  might 
be  indefinitely  extended.  All  the  moral  and  spiritual  ob- 
jections to  the  contemplation  of  an  Infinity  to  which  we  can 
ascribe  no  human  feeling,  and  in  which  we  can  see  no  intel- 
ligible plan,  disappear  to  men  who  habitually  respect  a  visible 
and  human  Providence,  to  whom  Infinity  is  a  colourless 
background.  "Blind  causation"  cannot  appal  men  whose 
interests  are  centred  in  the  moral  causation  of  human  progress. 
Human  reason  has  no  preponderant  part  in  a  world  which 
is  to  us  pervaded  with  a  sense  of  human  love  and  human 
energy.  The  mysteries  around  us  and  within  us  do  not 
paralyse  men  whose  dominant  desire  is  to  achieve  some  prac-' 
tical  result  in  the  world  of  reality  and  to  hand  it  on  better 
to  their  successors.  There  is  no  difficulty  felt  by  men  in 
turning  aside  from  conundrums,  however  ancient  or  fas- 
cinating, when  they  are  trained  to  feel  how  precious  is  every 
hour  of  active  life. 

The  survival  of  the  fittest,  the  struggle  for  existence,  the 
tendency  to  degenerate,  and  all  the  other  tendencies  which 
biologists  note  as  incident  to  organisms  in  our  unstable 
planetary  conditions  are  true  enough  as  tendencies,  and  we 
are  perfectly  prepared  to  accept  the  final  demonstrations 
of  real  science  thereon.  We  are  not  ready  to  jump  for  joy 
at  every  new  hypothesis  which  seems  to  threaten  humanity 
with  an  early  dissolution.  And  in  any  case  we  are  confident 
that  humanity,  which  has  overcome  far  more  ominous  an- 
tagonists, has  ample  resources  within  itself  to  counteract 


62  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

any  tendencies  which  threaten  its  progress.  And  thus  it 
comes  about  that  a  relative  synthesis  —  which  means  a  phi- 
losophy and  a  religion  that  has  its  central  field  in  this  Earth 
and  its  dominant  inspiration  in  Humanity  —  has  open  to  it 
all  the  solid  truths  which  modern  science  can  establish,  free 
from  the  sophisms  and  evasions  of  Theology,  and  at  the  same 
time  has  open  to  it  all  the  elevating  thoughts,  hopes,  conso- 
lations, and  yearnings  which  are  conferred  by  a  loving  and 
submissive  reverence  for  a  sympathetic  and  mighty  Provi- 
dence. 


•      THE  HUMAN   SYNTHESIS 

Philosophy  should  mean  such  a  co-ordinated  system  of 
thought  as  may  cause  the  whole  mental  apparatus  to  con- 
verge. Religion  should  mean  that  concentration  of  belief 
and  feeling  on  one  dominant  Power,  whereby  our  whole 
human  nature  is  purified  and  disciplined,  and  so  is  constantly 
inspired  to  the  strenuous  accomplishment  of  man's  true  work. 

The  older  and  current  forms  of  Philosophy  and  of  Religion 
fail  precisely  at  this  point :  they  do  not  systematise  all  our 
ideas;  they  do  not  pretend  to  organise  the  entire  life  of  man. 

The  degenerate  pupils  of  Kant  and  of  Hegel  who  now  lay 
claim  to  the  title  of  philosophers  offer  us  nothing  that  even 
assumes  to  be  a  philosophy  of  science,  or  of  conduct,  or  of 
history,  or  of  society.  Their  so-called  philosophy  is  limited 
to  ontological  and  psychological  aenigmas.  The  evolutionist 
schools  no  doubt  tread  lightly  over  these  metaphysical  bogs; 
but  on  their  side  they  entirely  drop  history,  and  we  pass  in 
their  pages  from  prehistoric  and  half-savage  man  to  the 
sceptics  of  the  eighteenth  century.  A  philosophy  with  such 
enormous  voids  is  not  really  synthetic. 

Those  schools  of  thought  which  adopt  a  theological  basis, 
or  admit  supernatural  ideas,  whether  Catholic,  Neo-Chris- 
tian,  or  frankly  Deist,  have  a  great  deal  to  say  about  history, 
or  rather  about  arbitrar\'  portions  of  history,  explaining  them 
freely  by  the  light  of  their  supernatural  hypotheses;  and  they 
certainly  do  understand  the  great  primary  truth,  that  Religion 

63 


64  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

is,  and  always  has  been,  the  dominant  principle  of  Man's 
social  life.  But  then,  alas !  these  theological  philosophers 
have  nothing  to  tell  us  about  the  development  of  modern 
science,  about  the  statics  or  the  dynanjics  of  that  industrial 
society  which  forms  the  complex  problem  of  modern  life. 
None  have  anything  serious  to  say  about  secular  education, 
scientific  politics,  political  economy,  science,  health,  poetry, 
art.  All  these  things,  that  is,  four-fifths  of  life,  lie  outside 
the  range  of  Theology,  just  as  they  lie  outside  the  range  of 
Metaphysics. 

Many  of  these  subjects  are  no  doubt  strongly  grappled 
with  by  the  materialist  schools  of  thought,  which  deal  in  a 
scientific,  and  often  in  a  philosophic,  spirit,  with  science, 
politics,  economy,  and  the  like.  But,  inasmuch  as  their 
history,  such  as  it  is,  jumps  from  the  Bone  Age  to  the  age 
of  Diderot  and  Hume,  they  deliberately  ignore  just  those 
parts  of  life  which  Theology,  with  all  its  shortcomings, 
directly  takes  as  its  sphere.  The  instincts  of  the  human  soul 
towards  some  great  Power  external  to  itself,  the  desire  to  be 
brought  into  communion  wdth  the  World  around  us,  to  rest 
in  some  definite  conception  of  the  way  in  which  We  and  the 
World  around  us  are  related  to  each  other,  the  yearning  to 
know  more  of  that  fellowship  we  feel  within  us  towards  the 
mighty  whole  of  which  we  are  sons  and  members;  finally, 
the  desire  to  put  forth  these  instincts  of  sympathy  in  some 
common  act  of  adoration  —  these  are  things,  we  say,  of  vast 
power,  utterly  ineradicable  from  the  heart  of  man,  essential 
to  the  life  of  man ;  nor  can  they  be  disposed  of  by  an  unin- 
telligible chapter  or  by  a  logical  formula  or  two.  They  must 
lie  deep  as  the  great  fundamental  stratum  of  all  philosophy ; 
they  must  coincide  with  its  entire  field.  The  system  in 
which  these  things  have  no  place,  nay,  in  which  they  do  not 
take  the  first  place,  may  contain  many  useful  things;    but 


THE   HUMAN   SYNTHESIS  6$ 

it  is  not  a  system  of  human  life.  That  is  to  say,  it  is  not  Phi- 
losophy ;  much  less  is  it  Religion. 

The  conventional  answer  to  this  is  as  follows :  Philosophy 
and  religion  have  each  special  spheres  of  their  own;  phi- 
losophy has  nothing  to  do  with  science,  or  history,  or  politics, 
or  devotion;  religion  has  nothing  to  do  with  thought,  or 
logic,  with  worldly  wisdom,  or  physical  health,  or  earthly 
wealth.  The  business  of  philosophy,  they  say,  is  with  ab- 
stract existence ;  that  of  religion,  with  the  Soul  and  its  future. 

In  this  answer  is  re\ealed  the  reason  why  Philosophy  and 
Religion  have  to-day  so  little  permanent  hold  over  men,  why 
their  accepted  authority  is  so  small,  and  the  anarchy  within 
them  so  deep.  Philosophies,  which  profess  to  give  men  an 
ultimate  scheme  of  ideas,  leave  out  of  their  scheme  vast  re- 
gions of  ideas,  some  of  them  the  most  intense  and  profound 
that  stir  men  to  act.  Religions,  which  profess  to  concentrate 
men's  spirit  on  the  sole  end  of  life,  leave  out  and  profess 
to  despise  almost  all  that,  even  to  the  noblest  natures,  makes 
life  worth  living:  this,  they  tell  us,  belongs  to  some  other 
sphere,  that  of  science,  politics,  art,  anything  but  religion. 
The  natural  result  follows.  Human  nature  soon  wearies  of 
metaphysical  sublimities  and  of  theological  ecstasies,  and  it 
deals  with  life  as  it  best  can,  framing  exj^lanations  of  it  and 
ideals  for  it  in  its  own  practical  way.  And  this  way  cannot 
be  reconciled  with  the  philosophies  and  the  religions  which 
strive  to  eliminate  nature.  It  combats  them,  baffles  them, 
and  finally  silences  them  all. 

Philosophy  and  Religion  must  remain  thus  impotent,  a 
byword  and  a  jest  to  clear-sighted  and  energetic  natures, 
whilst  they  thus  are  content  to  nibble  at  separate  sides  of 
human  nature.  One  sees  at  once  why  they  hold  themselves 
restricted  to  special  corners  of  Man's  being.  Philosophy, 
in  so  far  as  it  is  metaphysical,  cannot  consent  to  surrender 


66  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON  SENSE 

itself  uniformly  to  the  logic  of  positive  observation,  and  so 
cannot  touch  the  real  problems  of  life  and  of  know^ledge. 
Philosophy,  so  far  as  it  is  materialist,  cannot  bring  itself  to 
recognise  the  spiritual  nature  of  man,  and  so  cannot  touch 
the  problems  of  Veneration,  Adoration,  and  the  highest 
sympathies.  Religion  again,  fondly  clinging  to  the  super- 
natural as  if  that  were  its  sole  raison  d'etre,  dreads  to  be 
dragged  into  the  real  and  active  world  where  everything 
supernatural  is  grotesque;  and  so  religion  stands  to-day, 
like  a  pathetic  Gothic  ruin,  soothing  and  touching  the  finer 
natures  amongst  us  still,  but  quite  outside  of  and  apart  from 
the  busy  life  of  men. 

Philosophy,  equally  with  Religion,  is  nothing  if  not  syn- 
thetic —  that  is,  co-ordinating  and  harmonising  —  and  also 
comprehensive,  that  is,  correlating  all  sides  of  thought  and 
life.  Leave  any  sides  of  thought  or  life  wholly  out  of  sight 
in  your  philosophy  or  your  religion,  and  these  introduce  con- 
flict, and  ultimately  confusion.  The  reason  is  obvious  from 
the  very  definition  of  philosophy  or  of  religion.  The  one 
professes  to  set  on  an  immutable  basis  the  highest  generali- 
sations of  thought,  the  paramount  ideas  of  the  human  mind. 
The  other  professes  to  hold  out  to  us  as  ever  present  and 
eternal  verities  the  highest  aims  of  human  life,  and  the  para- 
mount object  of  our  noblest  affection.  Is  it  not  plain  that 
utter  failure  must  ensue  if  the  paramount  ideas  of  Philosophy, 
or  the  paramount  ideal  of  Religion,  cannot  be  got  into  line 
with  the  practical  needs  of  life,  or  the  general  sympathies 
and  instincts  of  our  nature? 

Philosophy  and  Religion  are  not  the  same;  because  Phi- 
losophy is  a  synthesis  of  knowledge  and  of  ideas,  and  Reli- 
gion is  a  synthesis  of  nature  and  of  life.  But  both  are  the 
same  in  this,  that  they  must  give  a  complete  harmony,  or 
they  give  none  at  all.     The  one  must  effect  a  complete 


THE   HUMAN   SYNTHESIS  6/ 

synthesis  of  the  whole  intellectual  sphere ;  the  other,  a  com- 
plete synthesis  of  the  whole  vital  energy.  Philosophy  and 
Religion,  affecting  to  deal  with  the  highest,  and  yet  knowing 
nothing  of  many  of  the  commonest  and  widest  truths  that 
concern  Man,  are  mere  impostures.  Philosophy  and  Reli- 
gion must  be  able  to  account  for  the  whole  of  thought,  the 
whole  of  life,  or  they  do  nothing.  Now,  no  one  of  the  cur- 
rent systems  of  Philosophy  or  Religion  either  does  account 
for  the  whole  of  thought,  the  whole  of  life,  or  even  pretends 
to  do  so.  When  Auguste  Comte  recalled  men  to  the  true 
question  —  What  must  Philosophy  explairt,  what  must  Reli- 
gion effect  ?  —  he  started,  even  if  he  had  done  nothing  else, 
a  conclusive  revolution  in  the  method  of  human  thought, 
in  the  ideal  of  Alan's  life. 

We  are  persuaded  that  all  these  things  can  be,  and  must 
be,  reconciled,  brought  into  harmony.  We  say  there  is  a 
scheme  of  thought  whereby  the  religious  emotions,  the  scien- 
tific beliefs,  the  practical  energies,  may  all  have  their  natural 
play  and  freedom,  yet  may  all  work  one  with  another,  not 
working,  as  they  do  now,  one  against  the  other.  This  scheme 
of  thought,  to  sum  it  up  in  a  phrase,  consists  in  referring  every- 
thing human  to  the  continuity  of  human  progress,  on  a  uni- 
form basis  of  demonstrable  law.  This  is  a  Human  Synthesis, 
meaning  by  this  term  a  system  at  once  of  thought  and  of  life,  co- 
extensive with  human  nature,  omitting  nothing  that  is  human 
or  ministers  to  humanity,  never  wandering  into  the  super- 
human, or  any  Absolute  Universe ;  but,  on  the  contrary,  consist- 
ently grouping  everything  we  know  or  do  round  the  permanent 
good  of  Man,  conceived  in  the  highest  and  widest  sense. 

This  Human  Synthesis  thus  differs  from  every  kind  of 
inquiry  that  is  purely  philosophical  or  scientific  from  any 
that  is  purely  literary.  It  looks  upon  research  not  as  an  end, 
but  as  an  instrument  to  effect  some  real  result,  now,  presently, 


68  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

or  hereafter.  Abstract  thought  we  need,  special  research  we 
need,  but  no  research,  no  kind  of  thought,  is  ever  to  be  a 
mere  law,  a  sole  end,  to  itself :  arbitrary,  absolute,  unhuman, 
irreligious. 

This  Human  Synthesis  differs,  too,  from  every  reforming 
scheme  in  that  it  invariably  treats  the  present  as  a  mere 
continuation  of  the  past,  and  the  future  as  simply  the  neces- 
sary and  destined  product  of  the  past  and  the  present.  Social 
philosophers  and  idealists  are  wont  to  talk  as  if  the  present 
were  a  muddle  hardly  worthy  of  attention,  as  if  the  future 
could  be  recast  in  new  and  superior  moulds,  flinging  the 
rotten  past  away  as  dross  and  rubbish.  Even  the  phi- 
losophers of  Evolution  consistently  forget  that  the  genera- 
tion of  men  to  be  are  being  daily  evolved  out  of  the  whole 
of  the  generations  that  have  been.  Evolutionists  are  the 
readiest  of  all  to  tear  up  whole  regions  of  human  history  as 
waste  paper,  or  to  discharge  the  product  of  vast  ages  of  Man 
into  the  deep,  as  some  dangerous  excrement  of  the  race. 

There  is  no  test  so  sure  for  any  claim  to  treat  of  things 
human  as  this  —  Does  it  give  a  complete  theory  of  the  whole 
history  of  Man's  past  ?  When  we  say  history,  we  imply  of 
course  more  than  annals :  some  things  not  always  included 
even  in  the  learning  of  the  Gibbons,  the  Macaulays,  and  the 
Freemans.  History  means  the  whole  series  of  the  laws  and 
phenomena  traceable  in  the  development  of  the  human  race, 
including  the  prehistoric,  the  uncivilised,  and  the  oceanic 
world,  and  including  the  history  of  science,  of  philosophy, 
of  religion,  of  industry,  of  manners,  of  economy,  of  mechanics, 
of  art :  in  short,  the  history  of  society  much  more  than  the 
history  of  war  or  politics.  They  who  can  give  us  a  scientific 
and  consistent  theory  of  history  in  this  sense  are  alone  com- 
petent to  give  us  an  adequate  scheme  of  philosophy  or,  I  say 
it  advisedly,  a  complete  ideal  of  religion. 


THE   HUMAN   S\^'THESIS  69 

In  the  early  days  of  Christianity,  miraculous  power  was 
regarded  as  the  test  of  a  divine  mission.  We  might  almost 
say  in  these  days  that  the  test  of  a  philosophical  mission  in 
sociology,  that  is,  power  to  cast  accurately  the  laws  that 
determine  the  Present  and  the  Future,  is  the  fact  of  having 
given  an  adequate  explanation  of  the  Past. 

After  five-and-twenty  years  of  continuous  study  of  the 
historical  theory  of  Auguste  Comte,  we  have  come  for  our 
part  to  believe  that  there  is  none  other  with  which  it  can  be 
even  compared.  I  am  far  from  supposing  that  a  theory 
constructed  forty  years  ago  by  one  who  was  a  man  of  science 
and  a  philosopher,  not  a  specialist  in  history,  is  absolutely 
final  or  infallible.  Such  an  idea  would  be  laughable  to  a 
positivist,  who  can  smile  equally  at  the  petty  criticisms  of 
some  historical  pedant  or  some  political  partisan.  It  is 
beyond  all  question  more  lucid,  more  complete,  more  real, 
more  scientific  than  the  general  theory  of  Hegel;  and  after 
Hegel's  what  have  we?  We  turn  to  the  most  popular  of 
the  philosophic  writers  of  our  time.  Do  we  find  in  Mr. 
Herbert  Spencer,  in  Mr.  Lewes,  in  Mr.  Mill,  in  Mr.  Huxley, 
or  Mr.  Darwin,  nay,  in  Mr.  Carlylc  or  Mr.  Freeman,  his- 
torians by  profession,  anything  that  can  be  called  a  general 
conception  of  the  entire  course  of  human  evolution,  moral, 
practical,  intellectual,  and  physical? 

Every  attempt  to  found  a  sound  conception  of  Philosophy 
or  of  Religion  without  a  real  and  complete  Sociology  *  is  futile. 
And  every  attempt  to  form  a  Sociology  on  anything  short 
of  a  complete  concrete  theory  of  Man's  progress  in  civilisation 
is  an  attempt  to  found  Sociology  out  of  one's  head,  to  spin 
a  system  out  of  one's  inner  consciousness.     Wc  hear  much 

'  Purists  in  language  will  have  at  length  to  submit  to  this  indispensable 
hybrid,  which  means  the  science  of  the  elements  and  of  the  course  of  human 
society. 


■JO  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

nowadays  of  the  necessity  for  basing  our  Sociology  on  prin- 
ciples of  Evolution.  Precisely  so.  But  what  does  Evolu- 
tion, applied  to  the  progressive  civilisation  of  man,  imply 
if  it  be  not  a  systematic  history  of  human  work  from  the  time 
of  the  Cave-men  and  the  Lake-men  to  that  of  the  great 
Hordes;  and  thence  onward  to  the  Theocracies,  the  Poly- 
theists,  the  Greeks  and  the  Romans,  and  so  on  to  the  history 
of  Catholicism,  of  Feudalism,  the  dissolution  of  both,  the 
Revolution,  and  modern  industrial  society  ?  What  we  need  is 
a  complete  scheme  of  Evolution  throughout  this  entire  series. 

Another  great  difference  there  is  which  marks  off  the 
Positive  Synthesis  from  all  the  actual  philosophical  schemes. 
It  is,  or  rather  it  contains,  a  general  Philosophy;  but  the 
Philosophy  is  merely  one  side  of  the  system.  It  is  an  active, 
doing,  changing  system.  It  is  not  only  a  philosophy  with 
a  theory  of  what  is  being  done,  but  it  is  a  polity  with  a  pro- 
gramme of  what  ought  to  be  done,  a  society,  a  working  body, 
one  may  say  a  Church,  with  a  set  of  institutions  to  put  its 
programme  into  action. 

Positivism,  by  virtue  of  this  Human  Synthesis,  never  works 
out  a  theory,  or  enters  upon  a  research  for  mere  love  of  re- 
search, but  in  full  sense  of  the  vast  importance  of  research 
wisely  directed  to  contribute  to  human  wants.  Not  that  all 
speculation  is  necessarily  with  a  direct  and  immediate  de'sign 
of  present  action  and  use.  But  it  is  never  purposely  idle, 
consciously  aimless,  due  to  mere  intellectual  curiosity  as  of 
boys  intent  on  "odd  and  even." 

To  us  this  perpetual  and  aimless  busying  about  problems, 
philosophical,  scientific,  literary,  in  mere  vacuity  or  for  mere 
vanity,  with  no  social  or  intelligible  motive  but  these,  is  one 
of  the  most  melancholy  spectacles  of  our  time.  Thousands 
of  learned  and  ingenious  minds  are  occupied  in  incessant 
re-shifting  and  re-sorting  the  infinite  materials  before  us, 


THE  HUMAN  SYNTHESIS  7I 

teaching  us  nothing,  preparing  nothing,  cumbering  the  field 
of  knowledge  and  of  thought,  wasting  good  brain  in  multi- 
plying chaos.  For  multitudes  of  these  studious  men  never 
make  up  their  minds  on  a  single  great  problem  of  thought 
or  of  life ;  hardly  know  what  it  is  that  men  need  to  know  and 
need  to  help  them  in  life;  shrinking  even  from  this  first 
duty  of  a  healthy  understanding,  so  long  only  as  they  can 
soothe  the  itch  of  their  cerebral  curiosity. 

Without  saying  that  the  counting  of  the  pebbles  on  the 
sea-shore  is  an  altogether  idle  and  useless  employment,  we 
may  truly  say  that  interminable  and  purposeless  wandering 
in  the  realm  of  knowledge  is  a  demoralising  and  humiliating 
spectacle.  Such  are  like  the  spirits  seen  by  the  Poet  in 
Limbo,  "who  with  desire  languish  without  hope."  Things 
of  priceless  value  need  to  be  known ;  and  they  are  neglected. 
The  enormous  multiplication  of  minute  and  detached  ob- 
servations crowd  out  the  really  essential  problems  and  truths. 
Worst  of  all,  the  habit  of  employing  the  intellect  in  purpose- 
less researches,  like  schoolboys  writing  show  verses  or  com- 
peting for  a  prize,  unmans  the  character,  weakens  the  in- 
tellectual fibre,  and  lowers  the  standard  of  the  age. 

The  work  before  the  intelligence  of  Man  is  practically 
infinite ;  the  materials  and  possible  fields  of  work  are  infinite ; 
the  relative  strength  of  our  intellect  to  cope  with  this  work 
is  small  indeed.  As  Bacon  said,  the  subtlety  of  Nature  is 
ever  beyond  the  subtlety  of  Man.  Ten  thousand  years  of  the 
brightest  genius,  with  millions  and  millions  of  fellow-work- 
men, will  not  suffice  to  accomplish  all  that  Man  needs  of  dis- 
covery, knowledge,  method,  experiment,  meditation,  re- 
corded observation,  to  make  life  all  that  it  might  be  and  ought 
to  be.  To  accomplish  it  needs  the  complex  organisation  of 
an  army,  the  discipline,  co-operation,  patience,  division  of 
labour,  of  a  great  government.     And  withal  we  have  capable 


72  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

brains  idly  exhausting  their  powers  in  the  meanest  of  curi- 
osities, in  the  most  contemptible  pursuit  of  personal  prizes. 
Never  will  philosophy  be  worthy  of  its  mission  till  observers 
and  thinkers  can  set  themselves  to  labour  again  in  that 
religious  spirit  in  which  the  mediaeval  poets  or  the  truly 
Catholic  painters  would  begin  their  work  with  prayer.  And 
if  it  be  little  now  that  the  modern  biologist  or  chemist  could 
do  with  prayer,  he  might  find  the  real  essence  of  prayer  in  a 
heartfelt  sense  of  social  duty,  of  the  human  future  to  which 
his  work  is  dedicated,  of  the  majestic  past  from  which  every 
faculty  he  has  is  drawn. 

It  is  here  that  the  Human  Synthesis  stands  in  such  con- 
trast with  the  practice  of  so  many  schools,  scientific,  meta- 
physical, literary.  It  calls  for  a  real  co-ordination  of  all 
knowledge ;  that  is  to  say,  in  order  to  bring  knowledge  to 
bear  on  life,  it  must  be  made  connected  and  systematic. 

Our  separate  lines  of  knowledge  will  go  on  to  indefinite 
divergence,  and  will  fail  to  support  each  other,  until  we  can 
weave  them  into  one  —  form  a  single  fabric  of  them.  We 
must  be  able  to  answer  such  questions  as  these :  — 

1.  What  is  the  bearing  of  Astronomy  on  our  general 
theory  of  Duty? 

2.  What  is  the  action  and  reaction  of  the  science  of  Chem- 
istry (for  instance)  on  Sociology? 

3.  What  is  the  practical  relation  of  Biology  to  Morals? 
Whilst  we  have  no  answer  to  these  questions  we  have  no 

real  Philosophy,  no  synthesis,  no  stable  basis  of  harmony 
between  our  thoughts  and  our  life.  Well !  in  other  words, 
we  have  no  Religion.  For  religion  (we  say)  is  just  that  en- 
tire harmony  between  the  human  nature  and  the  life  our 
human  nature  leads. 

It  is  the  fashion  now  to  dispense  with  all  attempts  at  con- 
vergence, to  decry  it  as  a  narrowing  thing.     Synthesis,  re- 


THE   HUMAN   SYNTHESIS  73 

ligion,  are  words  shrunk  into  a  remnant  of  their  old  meaning, 
things  that  the  world  leaves  to  metaphysicians  and  devotees. 
But  this  assumption  that  all  synthesis,  any  religion,  is  bad 
is  simply  part  of  the  revolt  against  an  incomplete  synthesis, 
imperfect  religion.  It  is  against  all  the  great  examples  of 
high  civilisation  in  history.  It  does  not  rest  on  a  shadow  of 
evidence,  or  even  of  argument.  The  sceptical  and  revolu- 
tionary schools  assume  it  as  an  a  priori  truth.  But  is  the 
actual  intellectual  state  and  the  present  social  condition  the 
result  of  that  state,  so  admirable  and  perfect  as  to  justify 
its  own  transcendent  origin,  to  prove  itself  without  evidence? 
Do  our  deepest  brains  and  hearts  rest  satisfied  in  the  intel- 
lectual state  of  to-day?  Far  from  it.  Conservatives  and 
reformers  in  thought  alike  agree  that  there  is  much  out  of 
joint ;  they  chafe  at  the  discord  of  ideas  which  is  ever  hinder- 
ing truth. 

The  older  philosophy,  that  which  grew  up  with  and  out  of 
Theology,  has  its  defmite  connection  between  Astronomy  and 
Duty.  God,  said  the  pious  thinker,  made  the  Sun  and  the 
planets  to  revolve  round  this  earth  as  we  see  them,  the  Sun 
to  give  men  light  by  day,  the  Moon  by  night ;  and  He  too 
revealed  to  men  their  duty  and  commanded  them  to  fulfil  it. 
And  so  on  throughout  all  human  knowledge.  This  is,  no 
doubt,  a  very  rude  theory,  and  utterly  unsatisfactory,  but 
it  is  a  synthesis  of  human  thought.  It  is  the  theological 
synthesis.     Mighty  results  have  been  achieved  thereby. 

Materialism,  too,  has  given  some  sort  of  answer  to  the 
question  (let  us  say)  —  What  is  the  relation  between  Biology 
and  Morals?  Materialism  asserts  that  the  state  of  the  moral 
nature  is  dependent  on  the  state  of  the  nervous  system,  for 
this  determines  the  moral  condition:  in  fact,  that  moral  phe- 
nomena may  be  reduced  to,  and  studied  as,  phenomena  of 
nerve-tissue    and    the    like;     not    morally,  but  biologically. 


74  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

This  theory  will  land  us  in  all  the  evils  of  fatalism ;  it  will 
deprave  our  hearts  and  muddle  our  heads  in  the  end.  But 
it  is  a  theory ;  it  is  the  materialist  synthesis ;  and,  consistently 
worked  out,  it  will  effect  great  things,  even  if  they  be  evil 
things. 

Every  great  effort  or  phase  of  human  civilisation  has  been 
due  to  the  fact  that  there  was  a  correspondence  between  the 
moving  ideas  current  at  the  time  and  the  life  that  men  lived 
in  it.  There  was  always  a  congruity  in  men's  thoughts; 
they  could  be  correlated  as  a  series  or  a  system.  Those  who 
are  content  to  base  their  entire  existence  on  Revelation, 
Church,  Authority  of  any  kind,  naturally  regard  any  co- 
ordination of  knowledge  as  superfluous.  The  Religion, 
Church,  or  Creed  gives  some  general  unity  to  men's  thoughts 
and  knowledge,  and  supplies  the  ground  of  the  life  lived. 
Those,  on  the  other  hand,  who  seek  a  real,  a  scientific,  natural 
basis  for  their  life,  who  think  that,  come  what  may,  know- 
ledge and  truth  must  underlie  all  action  and  all  morality, 
all  such  (one  would  suppose)  must  insist  on  the  need  of  having 
all  real  knowledge  both  reduced  to  order  and  organically 
applied  to  life. 

There  are  many,  professing  to  base  themselves  on  science, 
who  repudiate  any  idea  of  reducing  science  to  system,  who 
shrink  from  it  with  horror,  and  would  leave  science, -and 
indeed  life,  to  free  research,  that  is,  to  chance.  What  is 
this  but  the  Nihilism  of  philosophy  ?  The  Nihilists  of  Russia, 
it  is  said,  desire  to  make  a  tabula  rasa,  to  get  rid  at  once  of 
governments,  institutions,  religions,  and  then  to  start  de  novo. 
Our  philosophical  and  scientific  Nihilists  protest  against  all 
system,  especially  any  system  that  is  to  deal  with  the  relative 
bearing  of  special  researches.  They  would  leave  everything 
to  the  infallible  inner  afflatus  of  each  inquirer's  intellectual 
inspiration.     Nihilism  in  philosophy  is  just  as  chimerical  as 


THE   HUMAN   S\'NTHESIS  75 

Nihilism  in  society.  All  the  reasons  which  apply  to  coherent 
institutions  in  society  apply  to  the  necessity  for  congruous 
and  systematic  ideas  in  thought. 

There  are  undoubtedly  some  materialists  who  seriously 
seek  for  an  intellectual  synthesis,  or  general  co-ordination 
of  knowledge.  But  these,  without  exception,  seem  to  look 
for  an  Absolute  Synthesis.  By  this  we  understand  an  ar- 
rangement of  knowledge  in  what  purports  to  be  the  true 
relations  of  things  to  each  other  as  they  actually  are,  some 
attempt  to  form  a  picture  of  the  Universe  in  its  real  shape. 
The  synthetic  philosophy  of  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  would 
seem  to  aim  at  a  co-ordination  of  laws  cosmological,  bio- 
logical, and  moral  round  a  common  principle  of  Evolution; 
and  he  has  worked  out  this  evolution  in  many  branches  of 
science,  the  most  notable  things  we  miss  being  the  facts  of 
general  history,  of  religion,  of  churches,  of  governments, 
of  poetry,  of  art.  A  synthetic  philosophy  should  give  us 
some  key  to  a  general  conception  of  history.  But  the  history 
of  Evolution  has  hardly  yet  explained  to  us  some  famous 
events  and  persons,  amongst  whom  we  might  count  Moses, 
St.  Paul,  Mahomet,  Caesar,  Charlemagne,  Richelieu,  Dante, 
St.  Francis,  a  Kempis,  Angelico,  Scott ;  the  Catholic  Church, 
the  Crusades,  the  Revolution. 

A  Human  Synthesis  is  in  direct  contrast  with  any  objective 
unity  whatever.  Giving  up  the  attempt  not  only  to  know 
things  as  they  really  are  in  themselves,  but  to  arrange  our 
knowledge  of  things  round  any  external  centre,  from  any 
absolute  standpoint,  the  Human  Synthesis  aims  only  at 
systematising  the  knowledge  of  that  which  affects  Man,  and 
of  grouping  it  round  the  fact  of  its  relation  to  Man.  Theo- 
logical thought  referred  all  knowledge  to  the  Creator  and  His 
will,  His  revealed  purposes,  and  Man's  future  destiny  at  His 
judgment-scat.     Metaphysical   thought,  when   it   attempted 


76 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 


any  synthesis  at  all,  found  a  centre  in  some  general  hypothesis 
of  Nature,  or  the  eternal  fitness  of  things.  A  purely  ma- 
terialistic synthesis,  or  a  synthesis  based  on  Evolution,  in  like 
manner  attempts  some  Absolute  arrangement,  conceived 
as  coinciding,  in  a  way  more  or  less  complete,  with  the  actual 
tableau  of  natural  law  as  we  suppose  it  really  energising  in 

space. 

It  is  a  necessary  result  of  the  relativity  of  all  our  know- 
ledc^e  that  we  can  have  no  Absolute  Synthesis,  just  as  we  can 
attain  to  no  objective  truth.  Even  if  our  knowledge  of  a 
thing,  passed  as  it  is  through  the  medium  of  our  own  un- 
trustworthy senses,  does  come  very  closely  in  each  special 
observation  to  that  reality  which  we  assume  to  be 
behind  each  group  of  sensations,  still  when  we  attempt  to 
arrange  a  series  of  such  groups  in  any  order,  the  human 
perspective,  in  which  alone  we  can  see  them,  must  show  them 
to  us  at  an  immeasurable  distance  from  the  real  relation  of 
these  groups  in  the  Universe,  if  any  such  relation  indeed  they 
have.  The  relativity  of  our  knowledge  is  continuous,  the 
mass  of  knowable  things  is  truly  infinite,  the  limitation  of 
Man's  powers  in  comparison  is  complete.  And  so,  the  at- 
tempt of  Man  to  co-ordinate  his  knowledge  in  terms  of  ab- 
solute knowledge  would  be  as  idle  as  the  attempt  to  reach 
absolute  knowledge.  If  Man  cannot  really  know  the  ob- 
jective World,  much  less  can  he  take  the  objective  World 
as  the  field  and  measure  of  his  knowledge.  Omniscience 
alone  can  do  this. 

Positivism,  holding  on  to  the  necessity  for  a  Synthesis, 
and  abandoning  the  attempt  at  an  absolute  Synthesis,  falls 
back,  as  the  corollary  to  the  relativity  of  knowledge,  on  the 
relative  Synthesis,  an  arrangement  of  all  our  ideas,  upwards 
and  downwards,  from  the  central  point  of  Man  in  the  widest 
and  grandest  conception  of  this  term,  that  is,  in  the  entire 


THE   HUMAN   SYNTHESIS  'J'J 

life  of  the  human  race  in  the  highest  of  its  ideals  and  its 
aspirations. 

Let  us  see  exactly  what  is  meant  by  a  relative  Synthesis 
for  Thought  and  Life.  It  is  the  real  surrender  of  the  attempt 
to  get  at  things  as  they  are  in  rerum  naturd;  the  effort  to  get 
even  at  absolute  relations  is  surrendered  as  completely  as 
we  surrender  the  effort  to  get  at  absolute  existences.  We 
concentrate  all  our  efforts  on  the  work  of  getting  a  knowledge 
of  things  in  so  far  as  they  affect  Man.  No  doubt  this  does 
not  imply  any  vulgar  utilitarianism  or  simply  material  in- 
terests in  men.  It  means  that  our  intellectual  efforts  are 
animated  and  marshalled  by  the  principle  of  their  ultimate 
bearing  on  human  life. 

This  is  what  we  mean  by  a  religious  philosophy,  a  religious 
tone  of  thought,  a  religious  ideal  of  labour.  Religion  does 
not  begin  and  end  in  just  worshipping  some  ideal  being  or 
power,  in  simply  holding  to  this  or  that  doctrine  about  the 
origin  of  the  universe,  in  hoping  or  fearing  some  imaginable 
good  or  evil  in  some  imaginable  after-world  —  this  is  not 
religion :  right  or  wrong,  it  is  the  machinery  of  religion,  the 
elements  or  instruments  of  religion.  Religion  has  been 
strained  down  into  these  things  by  priests  and  zealots  strug- 
gling to  save  something  in  the  crash  of  orthodoxy,  just  as 
Jesuits  would  narrow  Christianity  down  to  the  hierarchy 
or  the  Papal  See.  But  religion  in  its  proper,  full  sense  means 
the  state  of  unity  and  concentration  of  Nature  which  results 
when  our  intellectual,  moral,  and  active  life  are  all  made  one 
by  the  continual  presence  of  some  great  Principle,  in  which 
we  believe,  which  we  love  and  adore,  and  to  which  our  acts 
are  submitted,  so  that  the  perpetual  sense  of  our  dependence 
on  that  power  goes  deep  down  into  all  we  think,  or  feci,  or 
do.  Men  may  believe  in  God,  or  Heaven,  and  Hell,  and  yet 
their  souls  may  be  torn  with  contending  passions,  and  may 


yS  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

have  the  restlessness  and  incoherence  of  wild  beasts;  souls 
like  those  of  Philip  of  Spain,  or  Mary  Stuart.  To  have 
religion,  in  any  true  sense,  is  to  have  peace. 

This  peace,  no  merely  ecstatic  and  imaginary  state  of 
emotion,  but  a  real  concentration  of  all  Man's  varied  faculties 
in  one  work,  has  never  been  completely  effected  by  any  scheme 
whatever.  It  has  been  partially  effected  by  certain  schemes, 
religions,  systems,  or  philosophies  in  special  stages  of  civi- 
lisation. 

Even  Fetichism  (the  belief  that  activity  in  Nature  around 
us  is  due  to  the  emotions  and  wills  of  the  things  that  are  seen 
in  activity)  gives  some  sort  of  harmony  so  far  as  it  goes;  so 
that,  in  a  sense,  thought,  feeling,  and  action  are  stimulated 
and  disciplined  thereby. 

Theology,  in  its  long  history,  has  raised  human  nature  to 
periods  of  wonderful  energy.  Polytheism  produced  prodigies 
of  active  intensity.  Monotheism  has  had  sublime  power  over 
the  heart.  But  what  can  Monotheism  do  now  to  vitalise 
and  discipline  the  intellect,  absorbed  as  it  is  in  its  desperate 
struggle  with  science,  fact,  history,  common  sense?  Not 
that  one  would  presume  to  say  that  Monotheism  is  incom- 
patible with  intellectual  force  in  given  minds,  but  that  on  its 
own  confession  it  is  quite  unable  to  systematise  the  logic  of 
modern  thought,  to  disentangle  the  accumulated  masses  of 
modern  knowledge. 

A  metaphysical  creed,  such  as  Pantheism  or  that  gossamer 
Theism  which  is  real  Pantheism,  may  have  some  power  over 
the  emotional  nature  in  some  characters;  much  possibly 
over  the  intellect  in  the  poetic  spirits.  But  how  will  Panthe- 
ism, or  any  of  those  nebular  hypotheses  about  God  which 
now  amuse  subtle  men  of  letters,  how  are  these  to  concentrate 
the  activity?  Pantheism  is  a  meditative,  solitary,  subjec- 
tive creed.     How  can  the  imaginative  sentiment  that  every- 


THE  HUMAN   SYNTHESIS 


79 


thing  is  God,  and  God  is  everjihing  (certainly  nothing  that 
we  immediately  see  or  feel),  nerve  a  man  with  patience,  un- 
bending will,  enthusiastic  concentration  of  purpose  to  work, 
that  is,  to  change  things,  to  overcome  this,  to  develop  that, 
to  assert  the  supremacy  of  the  human  character  in  the  midst 
of  a  faulty  but  improvable  world  ?  Pantheism,  Neo-Theism, 
Nephelo-Theism,  is  the  religion  of  scholars,  not  of  men  and 
women  with  work  to  do. 

Turn  to  Materialism,^  in  any  of  its  prevalent  forms.  Take 
a  theory  of  an  all-sufficing,  all-explaining,  all-pervading  Evo- 
lution ;  it  is  a  creed  which  may  unquestionably  stimulate  the 
intellect,  give  it  a  central  point ;  it  may  do  the  same  for  the 
activity.  And,  now  that  the  development  of  the  intellectual 
and  active  powers  is  treated  as  the  sole  end  of  education, 
that  seems  enough  to  many :  so  that  they  find  a  sort  of  syn- 
thesis in  Evolution ;  it  becomes  to  them  a  central  idea,  round 
which  they  can  imagine  a  future  generation  basing  its  life 
and  thought. 

But  what  can  Evolution  do  to  give  a  basis  for  the  entire 
man,  how  can  it  act  on  the  moral  nature  and  appeal  to  feeling, 
to  veneration,  devotion,  love  ?  The  heart  of  ;Man  cannot  love 
protoplasm,  or  feel  enthusiastic  devotion  to  the  idea  of  sur- 
vival of  the  fittest.  Our  moral  being  is  not  purified  and  trans- 
figured by  contemplating  the  dynamic  potency  that  lies  hid 
in  Matter.  Was  any  one  ever  made  purer,  braver,  tenderer 
by  the  law  of  Perpetual  Diff'erentiation?  The  scorn  which 
true  brains  and  hearts  having  the  root  of  the  matter  in  religion 
launch  against  this  assumption  has  been  far  from  unjust  or 
excessive.  The  dream  that  on  the  ruins  of  the  Bible,  Creed, 
and  Commandments,  in  the  space  once  filled  by  Aquinas  and 

'  It  may  he  convenient  to  state  that  Materialism  is  throughout  used  for 
any  general  philosophy  of  the  world  and  of  Man  wherein  the  dominant 
force  is  not  found  in  some  conception  of  moral  will  and  the  highest  sympathy. 


8o  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

Bernard  and  Bossuet,  or  by  Paradise  Lost,  the  Pilgrim^s 
Progress,  and  the  English  Prayer  Book,  there  might  be  erected 
a  faith  in  the  Indefinite  Persistence  of  Force  and  the  Potential 
Mutability  of  Matter,  indeed  deserves  the  ridicule  it  meets. 
Evolution  will  never  eliminate  the  heart  out  of  Man  so  long 
as  Mankind  exists ;  nor  will  the  spirit  of  worship,  devotion, 
and  self-sacrifice  cease  to  be  the  deepest  and  most  abiding 
force  of  human  society. 

See  the  dilemma  in  which  the  Theological  and  the  Ma- 
terialist Syntheses  fatally  revolve.  The  theological  explana- 
tion, starting  from  profound  feeling  and  rude  knowledge, 
would  force  under  the  conception  of  an  anthropomorphic 
Providence  the  hard  facts  of  the  external  world.  Now  the 
hard  facts  of  this  external  world  —  law,  sequence,  struggle, 
imperfection,  decay  —  are  so  familiar  to  all  minds  that  they 
have  split  the  conception  of  Almighty  Benevolence  till  it 
bursts  and  cracks  around  us.  To  the  theologians  succeed 
the  m-aterialists,  radiant  with  the  triumph  of  law,  evolution, 
differentiation,  and  the  like ;  they  extend  these  conceptions 
to  Man,  to  society,  to  the  soul,  and  they  in  turn  seek  to  group 
all  ideas,  whether  cosmical  or  moral,  round  one  supreme 
conception.  Some  call  it  Law,  some  Force,  some  Evolution, 
some  Matter :  all  agree  in  this,  that  they  think  they  have 
found  one  conception,  theory,  group  of  ideas,  or  system  of 
thought,  which  can  be  carried  through  the  whole  range  of 
phenomena  and  will  explain  all  facts,  cosmical  or  human, 
physical  or  moral,  spiritual  or  social. 

They  have  rushed  on  the  other  horn  of  the  dilemma,  with 
consequences  even  worse  than  those  of  theologians.  The 
theologians  revolt  our  understanding  when  they  seek  to  force 
into  the  great  moral  conception  of  Providence  the  immutable 
world  of  law,  and  the  waste  disclosed  by  Nature.  The 
Materialists  revolt  our  hearts  when  they  seek  to  crush  the 


THE  HUMAN  SYNTHESIS  St 

great  moral  and  social  forces  of  Man,  under  conceptions  that 
are  physical  not  moral,  by  reference  to  sources  that  are  in- 
tellectual not  emotional.  Against  this  the  noble  instincts 
of  the  best  hearts  and  brains  rebel,  and  most  honourably  rebel. 
Man  and  our  human  society,  they  cry,  will  be  degraded  into 
mere  animality,  if  the  sole  supreme  Power  presented  to  our 
daily  thought  is  a  force  such  as  we  can  trace  in  a  chemical 
experiment,  applicable  to  gases  and  cells  just  as  much  as  to 
civilisation  and  to  our  human  hearts.  Well !  reply  the  ma- 
terialists, if  the  sole  supreme  Power  presented  to  our  daily 
thought  be  an  omnipotent,  ubiquitous  Providence  of  Free 
Will  and  infinite  Goodness,  your  science  becomes  a  fairy- 
tale, your  explanation  of  the  world  a  tissue  of  mystical  soph- 
isms, and  your  life  artificial,  hysterical,  useless. 

Both  objections  are  unanswerable,  for  both  are  true.  But 
then  both  claims  are  equally  inadmissible,  equally  false. 
The  claim  of  Theology  to  make  its  Providence  absolute  and 
ubiquitous,  paramount  in  the  physical  and  moral  Universe,  is 
just  as  hollow  as  its  claim  to  maintain  the  idea  of  fatherly 
protection  and  filial  reverence  is  strong.  The  claim  of  Ma- 
terialism to  see  nothing  in  human  nature  but  the  Reign  of 
Law  is  as  shocking  as  its  claim  to  maintain  the  omnipresence 
of  law  is  unassailable.  Theology  tries  to  make  our  ideas  of 
Nature  and  Man  reducible  in  the  limit  to  the  idea  of  God. 
Materialism  tries  to  make  our  knowledge  of  the  moral  and 
spiritual  world  ultimately  resolvable  into  our  knowledge  of  the 
physical  and  material  world.  The  one  theory  ends  in  becom- 
ing fantastic  and  even  insincere,  the  other  ends  in  being  un- 
human  and  even  bestial.  As  we  get  out  of  the  mysticism 
of  Theology,  we  fall  into  the  slime  of  Materialism. 

No  such  Monism  as  either  theory  presents  is  possible  in 
j)hilosophy.  Monism  is  a  remnant  of  the  old  ambition  of 
human  thought  in  its  infancy.     Providence  is  an  idea  that 


82  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

cannot  be  extended  throughout  the  realm  of  the  External 
World  as  well  as  of  Man,  any  more  than  the  idea  of  Force 
and  Evolution  can  be  admitted  to  rule  in  the  moral  as  well 
as  in  the  physical  world.     We  shall  have  eventually  to  recog- 
nise a  Dualism,  and  thus  we  can  save  our  belief  both  in  Law 
and  in  Providence.     The  world  of  Law  is  everywhere  visible 
in  the  environment  of  Man,  and,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  is  the 
ultimate  principle  therein,  manifested  to  the  eye  of  Man. 
The  world  of  Law  is  traceable  also  in  the  world  of  Man,  so 
far  as  Man  shares  the  nature  of  his  environment,  and  is  made 
up  of  it,  and  works  with  it.     But  face  to  face  with  the  envi- 
ronment there  stands  Man,  presenting  us  not  only  with  the 
phenomena  of  Law,  but  also  with  the  phenomena  of  Will, 
Thought,  and  Love.     Nor  are  these  phenomena  of  Will, 
Thought,  Love,  of  sympathy,  and  providence,  and  trust,  and 
hope,  at  all  uhimately  reducible  to  phenomena  of  sequence  and 
evolution,  however  intimately  associated  they  be  with  them. 
Thus,  then,  a  Human  Synthesis  avoids  both  horns  of  the 
dilemma  whereon  Theology  and  Materialism  strike  in  turn. 
It  does  not  seek  to  extend  the  reign  of  Feeling  into  the  Uni- 
verse.    It  does  not  suffer  Feeling  to  be  absorbed  into  the 
External  World  and  its  laws.     Man,  dependent  on  his  en- 
vironment and  yet  distinct  from  it,  even  in  a  way  controlling 
it,  remains  a  truly  human  Power,  with  a  sublime  ideal,- and 
profound  sympathies.     Great  as  he  is,  he  recognises  the 
eternal  limits  of  his  power.     Aspiring  as  he  is,  he  does  not 
forget  the  facts  and  the  immutable  conditions  of  his  destiny. 
The  World  and  Man  stand  in  continuous  correlation.     And 
Man,  renouncing  all  ideas  of  omniscience,  as  of  omnipotence 
or  omnipresence,  accepts  the  bounds  of  his  might ;   but  he 
is  humbly  conscious  that  on  certain  fields  his  human  heart 
is  supreme,  and  that  in  these  fields  are  to  be  found  the  solid 
parts  of  human  happiness. 


THE  HUMAN   SYNTHESIS  83 

In  the  end,  Theology,  Aletaphysics,  IMaterialism,  fail  to 
establish  any  permanent  unity  in  the  whole  of  human  life; 
the  first  failing  to  satisfy  the  full-grown  intellect,  the  second 
being  without  any  means  of  influencing  the  active  nature, 
the  third  being  a  blank  in  the  moral  sphere. 

A  Human  Synthesis,  or  central  motive,  reaches  all  of  these 
equally,  and  brings  them  into  harmony  one  with  another. 
It  incorporates  and  revives  all  that  is  solid  or  permanent  in 
Theology,  in  Panthesim,  in  Materialism.  If  it  does  not  con- 
centrate the  whole  life  of  Man  on  the  idea  of  a  Divine  Being, 
assumed  to  be  omnipotent,  omniscient,  and  all  good,  it  docs 
concentrate  Man's  life  in  the  visible  presence  of  a  being,  of 
surpassing  greatness,  beneficence,  and  wisdom,  when  com- 
pared with  any  single  individual  life.  If  it  declines  to  treat 
seriously  the  mystical  poetry  that  sees  God  in  everything, 
and  everything  in  God,  still  it  docs  observe  in  the  whole  en- 
vironment of  Man  the  forces  and  the  potencies  on  which  the 
great  Human  Being  rests  for  its  existence,  and  whercout  it 
frames  its  own  continual  growth :  forces  and  potencies  which 
that  Human  Being  can  frequently  control  and  can  per- 
petually adapt. 

In  one  sense,  the  Human  Synthesis  would  have  an  anal- 
ogy with  Pantheism,  if  we  looked  only  to  IMan,  that  is,  to 
one  side  of  the  equation,  and  put  aside  that  continual  en- 
vironment of  Man,  the  World,  by  acting  on  which  Man  puts 
forth  all  his  energy  and  works  out  his  progress.  Humanity 
can  be  traced  indeed  in  every  man  and  child ;  and  in  some 
sort  we  can  find  an  incarnation  of  Humanity  in  every  being 
of  our  race. 

So,  too,  if  a  Human  Synthesis  does  not  treat  the  abstract 
notion  of  Evolution  as  the  centre  of  its  faith,  it  includes 
Evolution  in  every  rational  sense,  inasmuch  as  it  puts  before 
our  eyes  perpetually,  not  the  idea  of  a  materialistic  series 


84  nilLOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

of  cosmical  laws,  but  the  real  image  of  our  great  human  whole, 
itself  passing  in  a  course  of  evolution  to  a  higher  state  of 
being,  whilst  it  gains  every  day  a  fuller  command  over  that 
unbroken  reign  of  law  which  the  material  world  presents, 
and  beneficently  applies  that  command  to  its  own  well-being. 

A  Human  Synthesis  reaches  to  all  parts  of  our  nature 
equally.  What  can  be  a  nobler  spur  to  perseverance  in  in- 
tellectual effort,  bracing  and  tempering  it  to  its  duty,  than 
the  sense  that  all  we  learn  and  all  we  teach  is  but  the  adding 
a  new  stone  in  the  vast  cathedral  of  intellectual  combination, 
the  edifice  which  was  begun  10,000  years  ago,  and  grows 
upward,  increasing  in  completeness  and  richness  with  each 
generation?  What  better  guide  need  we  in  the  task  of  giving 
due  correlation  to  our  knowledge  than  the  continual  remem- 
brance of  the  subtle  complexity  with  which  the  sciences  have 
worked  together  and  reacted  each  on  one  another,  and  have 
combined  together  in  ways  so  mysterious,  and  yet  so  real, 
for  the  practical  accomplishment  of  human  good? 

The  historic  side  of  science,  its  moral  power,  its  services 
to  human  nature,  its  unwearied  and  almost  logical  evolution, 
its  intimate  union  with  all  that  is  stable  and  real  in  Humanity 
—  these  are  all  lighted  up  with  a  new  colour  by  a  Human 
Creed  :  these  hard,  cold  truths  are  ennobled  by  it,  moralised, 
humanised.  Science  becomes  in  our  eyes  (not  the  godless 
puffing  up  of  earthly  reason),  but  in  a  new  sense,  sacred,  be- 
neficent, mighty ;  for  we  see  it  ever  clothed  in  a  vesture  of  great 
human  qualities  and  high  associations  with  human  destiny. 
Sacred,  we  may  say,  by  virtue  of  the  great  lives  that  have 
been  given  up  for  it  by  countless  martyrs  of  science,  myriads 
of  unknown  martyrs  no  less  than  the  great  known  chiefs 
and  captains  in  the  battle :  beautiful,  by  virtue  of  the  ex- 
quisite subtlety  and  invention  of  its  handiwork :  beneficent, 
by  virtue  of  the  incalculable  blessings  that  it  has  shed  upon 


THE   HUMAN   SYNTHESIS  85 

our  once  puny  race :  mighty,  by  virtue  of  the  almost  mirac- 
ulous power  with  which  it  has  endowed  a  species  that  was 
once  as  the  Bushman  and  the  Fuegian. 

If  this  Human  Synthesis  show  us  law  wherever  we  turn, 
and  thereby  sheds  throughout  the  whole  intellectual  system 
a  sense  of  rest,  reality,  utility,  still  it  does  not  leave  our  hearts 
for  ever  in  presence  of  a  hard  world  of  logical  formulae  and 
physical  sequence.  It  shows  us  at  once  law  in  Man,  and 
Man  himself  the  dispenser  of  law  —  using  it  for  his  own 
purposes,  with  infinite  versatility  and  command,  submitting 
himself  with  noble  freedom  and  humility  to  its  inevitable 
limits,  and  yet  in  the  end  the  true  master  of  the  fixed  con- 
ditions within  which  he  finds  his  life  has  been  cast,  over- 
coming Nature,  as  Bacon  says,  by  yielding  to  her  wisely: 
at  last,  splendidly  triumphant,  not  over  law,  nor  in  spite  of 
law,  but  by  means  of  law  —  Man  being  himself  the  most 
beautiful  and  sublime  illustration  of  law,  and  yet  with  his 
human  will  and  his  human  brain  and  heart  having  that 
which  is  never  in  all  its  parts  utterly  commensurable  with 
law,  nor,  in  its  ultmate  mysteries,  altogether  explicable  by 
law. 

It  is  one  of  the  most  daring  of  the  modern  attempts  to 
harmonise  Theology  and  Science  (chimerical  and  indeed  un- 
thinkable as  the  attempt  itself  may  be  judged)  that  God 
may  be  reconciled  with  the  Reign  of  Law  by  calling  Laws 
the  thoughts  of  the  Divine  Mind,  so  that  the  physical  laws 
of  the  world  and  the  laws  of  human  evolution  are  not  poten- 
tialities inherent  in  things  and  in  men,  but  arc  themselves 
the  wishes  and  ideas  of  Omnipotence.  In  this  way  a  some- 
what sophistical  Pantheism  has  sought  to  save  at  once  the 
admitted  immutability  of  law,  its  omnipresence,  and  the  free 
will  of  a  Divine  Providence.  The  invariable  sequences  that 
science  reveals  in  all  things  are  not,  we  arc  told,  external  to 


86  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

the  Creator,  but  are  simply  the  way  in  which  he  chooses  to 
work  and  to  think.  They  who  put  this  forth  have  hardly,  one 
would  judge,  worked  out  all  the  consequences  of  this  some- 
what irreverent  theology,  which  would  make  the  Black  Death, 
the  earthquake  of  Lisbon,  and  the  Reign  of  Terror,  some  out 
of  many  of  the  less  praiseworthy  thoughts  of  the  Creator. 

Chimerical  as  this  notion  is  when  applied  to  an  All-Good 
Providence,  there  is  a  certain  sense  in  which  we  may  say  that 
the  laws  we  observe  in  all  things  are  indeed  the  thoughts 
of  Humanity.  Laws  of  Nature  are  not  so  much  the  expres- 
sion of  absolute  realities  in  the  nature  of  things  (of  this  we 
know  nothing  absolutely),  but  they  are  those  relations  which 
the  human  intellect  has  perceived  in  co-ordinating  phenomena 
of  all  kinds.  They  are  the  apparent  connection  of  things 
such  as  we  detect  them  by  observation. 

Man  is  most  certainly  not  omnipotent ;  and  therefore 
he  is  not  responsible  for  the  confusions  and  imperfections 
which  he  sees  as  results  of  various  laws  :  but  which  he  cannot 
remove.  He  is  not  all-good,  and  his  goodness  is  compatible 
with  the  social  catastrophies  of  which  his  imperfect  qualities 
make  him  the  victim.  The  whole  sphere  of  law  is  nothing  but 
the  outcome  of  the  human  intelligence  applied  to  the  world 
of  phenomena.  It  is  the  intellectual  aspect  of  Humanity. 
It  is  Humanity  thinking. 

On  the  other  hand,  Theology,  in  presenting  us  with  a  centre 
of  inscrutable  Godhead,  really  leaves  the  intellect  out  of  its 
scheme,  or  else  bids  it  serve  in  limits  and  fetters,  for  the 
modern  intelligence  has  no  meaning  but  in  extending  and 
consolidating  the  realms  of  law.  A  metaphysical  Pantheism 
presents  us  with  no  real  centre  or  motive  at  all.  ■  It  leaves  the 
intellect  free,  but  it  supplies  it  with  no  adequate  cause  for 
activity,  no  source  for  its  inspirations,  no  object  for  its  efforts. 
A  logical  Materialism  gives  us  Law  without  God,  as  Theology 


THE   HUMAN   SYNTHESIS  87 

had  given  us  God  without  Law ;  but  it  leaves  us  without  any- 
lofty  affection  whereby  the  exercise  of  the  intellect  can  be 
ennobled,  or  that  of  the  activity  made  moral. 

A  Human  Synthesis  (that  is,  Humanity  as  the  centre  of 
Thought  and  Life)  gives  us  both  the  Reign  of  Law  and  a 
minister  of  law  in  a  Human  Providence.  And  this  Providence 
and  this  Law  in  no  way  exclude  each  other.  Far  from  being 
incompatible,  each  is  the  complement  of  the  other,  for  they 
are  mutually  dependent.  The  intellect  has  no  check  to  its 
freedom  in  its  pursuit  of  law,  and  it  finds  a  worthy  subject 
of  its  reverence  in  the  being  which  is  the  real  discoverer 
and  subjective  author  of  law.  The  spirit  of  worship  is 
called  out  and  stimulated ;  but  it  is  never  allowed  to  carry 
the  nature  beyond  the  realities  of  science.  The  active  in- 
stincts of  our  nature  are  sanctified  and  fortified  by  the  splendid 
intellectual  resources  which  they  find  in  their  service,  by  the 
noble  work  of  regeneration  to  which  the  generous  instincts 
impel  them. 

Such  are  some  of  the  relations  and  the  harmonies  that  result 
from  a  human  centre  to  thought.  Of  necessity  it  makes 
philosophy  real,  organic,  useful,  and  relative.  For  it  puts 
an  end  to  the  eternal  search  after  absolute  truth,  and  to  those 
dissolving  views  of  endless  Hypothesis  which  are  the  only 
avenue  to  Absolute  knowledge  and  to  knowledge  of  the  Ab- 
solute. Man  as  the  great  centre  makes  everything  real. 
The  Philosophy  of  man  must  be  demonstrated,  verified, 
brought  to  the  test  of  experience.  It  must  have  a  common 
purpose  running  through  it ;  it  is  not  satisfied  with  simple 
speculation  ;  it  has  regard  to  the  good  of  Man,  will  be  limited 
by  human  powers,  and  be  relative  to  mundane  conditions. 
In  every  possible  sense  of  the  term,  we  need  to  put  an  end  to 
all  philosophies  of  things  in  themselves  —  of  Dinge  an  sich :  we 
need  to  know  things  as  Man  sees  them,  and  as  they  aflcct  Man. 


88  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

Thus  also  science  will  feel  a  new  impetus,  for  science  is 
never  really  great  except  in  due  relation  to  philosophy,  to 
general  theory,  and  Man's  real  necessities  and  demands. 
Nothing  was  ever  done  for  science  greater  than  what  was 
done  by  the  philosophers,  by  Aristotle,  Descartes,  Bacon, 
Hobbes,  Locke,  Leibnitz,  Hume,  Kant,  Diderot,  Hegel, 
and  Comte :  the  authors  these  of  the  great  creative  ideas  in 
general  philosophy.  Nor  was  any  period  of  science  so  fruit- 
ful as  that  which  followed  the  great  resettlements  of  human 
society;  the  Empires  of  the  Macedonians  and  that  of  the 
Cassars,  the  formation  of  modern  society,  and  finally  the  in- 
dustrial development  of  the  last  century.  The  claim  of  some 
modern  men  of  science  to  have  their  studies  regarded  as  the 
solitary  manifestation  of  individual  genius,  independent  of 
philosophy  and  general  classification,  impatient  of  any  social 
impulse,  and  of  all  synthetic  direction,  is  the  last  pettiness 
of  pedantic  specialism.  When  a  real  classification  and  har- 
mony of  the  sciences  has  become  an  accepted  truth,  when  a 
sound  general  philosophy  and  a  vitalising  religion  has  come 
to  pervade  and  dignify  every  corner  and  bypath  of  science, 
it  will  exhibit  a  breadth  and  elevation  unknown  to  academies 
and  the  competitors  for  puerile  prizes. 

All  that  is  needed  is  for  each  worker  in  every  science  to  be 
filled  with  a  living  sense  of  its  relation  to  the  whole  scheme 
of  Human  Thought  and  its  sacred  importance  to  the  future 
of  Human  Life.  It  is  a  mockery  to  pretend  that  this  con- 
stant association  of  the  daily  work  of  each  of  us  with  all  that 
is  high  in  general  philosophy  and  in  social  duty  would  be  to 
narrow  or  to  trammel  the  student  in  his  task.  Limitation 
of  the  freedom  of  all  human  thought  by  moral  oppression  is 
as  odious  as  limitation  by  legal  persecution.  We  ask  only 
for  an  adequate  education  and  an  enlightened  social  standard 
of  labour.     The  aim  of  labour  that  we  would  see  is  so  big 


THE   HUMAN   SYNTHESIS  89 

that  no  sense  of  narrowness  could  arise  from  its  constant 
presence  and  influence.  It  demands  only  this :  the 
habit  of  looking  at  the  organic  spirit  of  all  science,  at  its 
relations  to  the  whole  of  human  thought,  to  be  conscious  of  its 
high  religious  value,  to  bear  in  mind  its  magnificent  history 
of  continual  and  correlated  eflfort,  to  be  ready  to  hear  the  cry 
of  humanity  for  the  removal  of  pressing  evils,  for  the  dis- 
covery of  further  boons,  to  be  saturated  through  and  through 
with  the  belief  that  the  whole  career  of  science  has  been  one 
of  usefulness,  reality,  beneficence.  Assuredly  science  has 
nothing  to  lose,  everything  to  gain,  by  formally  and  visibly 
enrolling  itself  in  the  service  of  Humanity. 

But  the  great  effect  of  the  acceptance  of  a  Human  Synthesis 
will  be  on  life  as  a  whole,  moral  and  active  life,  even  more 
than  on  the  intellectual  life.  What  is  it  that  now  lies  at  the 
root  of  all  our  complaints  and  our  wants?  It  is  the  breach 
of  correspondence  and  common  purpose  throughout  our 
human  society  and  our  individual  powers.  All  schools  alike 
complain.  Not  one  but  all  cry  out  for  greater  co-operation 
between  classes  and  institutions,  greater  harmony  and  unity 
in  our  spirits  within  us.  The  preachers  of  all  the  theologies 
complain  that  there  is  no  concord  without  or  within.  Ten 
thousand  pulpits  bewail  the  pride  and  hardness  of  the  in- 
tellect, its  defiance  of  God,  its  indifference  to  His  worship. 

They  complain  as  much  of  the  active  instincts,  of  self-will 
and  hardness  of  heart,  disregard  of  duty,  mercy,  God.  The 
metaphysicians  languidly  complain  of  utilitarian  aims, 
sordid  indifference  to  abstract  thought,  to  the  fine  beauty 
of  a  meditative  existence.  On  their  side,  the  materialists 
complain  of  the  reign  of  superstition,  of  the  passion  for  re- 
ligious excitement,  of  the  nightmares  and  the  hallucinations 
that  persist  in  spite  of  science,  in  the  teeth  of  truth. 

So  all  are  dissatisfied  with  our  intellectual  and  social  state 


90  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

as  it  is.  No  school,  or  Church,  or  party  pretends  to  undivided 
sway;  all  complain  that  they  are  checked  or  baffled  by  the 
rest.  To  a  really  consistent  theology,  the  eagerness  of  science 
to  know,  the  zeal  of  the  world  in  its  business,  are  all  waste. 
He  to  whom  the  Judgment  is  intensely  real  and  awfully 
near  cannot  but  look  on  research  as  ungodly  trifling;  on 
industry,  commerce,  manufacture,  politics,  as  perilous  dis- 
tractions from  spiritual  hopes.  To  the  true  theological 
devotee  three-fourths  of  life  are  a  mistake,  a  curse,  a  snare; 
and  if  the  bulk  of  professing  believers  openly  ridicule  such 
inhuman  extravagance,  it  is  simply  that  the  bulk  of  profess- 
ing believers  do  not  believe  their  own  religion.  To  the 
metaphysical  enthusiast,  the  activities  of  life  are  unworthy 
of  the  higher  minds,  the  moral  devotions  of  the  pious  betray 
a  want  of  enlightenment.  To  the  materialist,  the  devotion, 
the  conviction,  the  consolations,  the  ecstasies  of  the  pious 
men  and  women  around  him  are  hallucination,  anachronism, 
degradation. 

So  each  of  these  leading  schools  of  thought  protests  how 
partial  is  their  own  grasp  over  the  world  of  to-day.  Each 
admits  that  life,  as  they  conceive  it,  is  still  marred,  wasted, 
depraved,  by  the  persistence  of  some  other  type  which  undoes 
so  much  of  their  own  work,  bars  the  way,  baffles  their  la- 
bours, and  turns  them  to  a  contrary  issue. 

What  a  waste  is  life  under  this  era  of  cross-purposes,  and 
competing  ideals,  and  rival  systems  of  faith !  The  intel- 
lectual systems  scorn  the  noblest  emotions  and  all  schemes 
of  life  that  are  based  on  them;  the  active  and  energetic 
schemes  of  life  coolly  push  aside  these  emotions,  and  are 
half  suspicious  of  the  practical  usefulness  of  the  intel- 
lectual schemes.  The  emotional  systems,  for  their  part, 
resolutely  turn  from  the  decisions  of  the  intellectual,  and 
persist    in    adoring,   against    all    the    proofs    and    al]    the 


THE   HUMAN   SYNTHESIS  9 1 

realities,  that  which  they  can  hardly  pretend  any  longer  to 
believe  in. 

What  a  waste,  discord,  in  human  life  is  this !  We  should 
suppose  that  the  one  thing  to  which  the  deeper  brains  and 
natures  of  our  race  would  betake  themselves  as  of  one  accord 
would  be  this :  to  recover,  if  it  might  be,  the  lost  sense  of 
unity  in  human  life,  to  knit  up  again  together  activity,  in- 
tellect, enthusiasm,  so  that  once  more  we  might  each  of  us 
feel  one,  feel  that  human  society  was  one,  as  men  felt  in  the 
days  of  Abraham,  or  of  Homer,  or  of  Charlemagne,  when  at 
least  the  various  faculties  and  provinces  of  Man's  nature  were 
not  at  open  war  with  each  other,  seeking  each  to  silence  the 
other.  One  could  imagine  almost  that  we  should  have  heard 
this  nineteenth  century  calling  aloud  with  groans,  like  the 
Pilgrim  of  the  seventeenth  century,  "What  shall  I  do  to  be 
saved?  who  shall  deliver  me  from  the  wrath  to  come?" 
Why  does  it  not  cry  aloud  to  be  saved  from  wasted  life  on 
earth,  to  be  delivered  from  the  moral  chaos  of  a  society  really 
at  war  with  itself,  its  best  powers  counteracting  each  other? 

The  nineteenth  century  did  not  cry  out  for  salvation,  for 
it  was  willing  to  believe  that  it  was  saved,  and  would  do 
well,  if  only  sundry  pernicious  principles  could  be  suppressed. 
Each  one  of  the  great  types  of  life  still  holds  itself  certain 
to  succeed  at  last,  if  it  can  only  manage  to  exterminate  the 
rest.  Theology  still  thinks  it  will  ultimately  get  the  better 
of  Pantheism,  and  of  Materialism,  and  will  yet  plant  God 
securely  on  the  throne  of  a  regenerated  (i.e.  a  tamed)  Thought 
and  Will ;  but  to  do  this  the  intellectual  and  active  nature  of 
Man  must  bow  to  the  commands  of  a  devout  and  ecstatic 
spirit.  Metaphysics  still  hope  for  the  ultimate  enlighten- 
ment of  all  human  minds,  and  the  final  overthrow  of  dog- 
matic formalism  and  utilitarian  vulgarity.  Materialism 
is  confident  also  that  the  reign  of  physical  law  will  ultimately 


92 


PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 


extirpate  religion;  and  having  done  that,  will  one  day  no 
doubt  succeed  in  making  our  industrial  existence  a  more 
human  and  shapely  thing  than  it  is. 

The  truly  Human  Synthesis  is  far  from  seeking  the  extinc- 
tion of  any  one  of  these  three  principles.  It  would  satisfy 
the  spirit  of  Devotion,  the  Intelligence,  the  Energy,  equally, 
and  all  together.  It  ends  the  secular  conflict  by  conciliation, 
by  a  true  consolidation,  not  by  giving  victory  to  any  one. 
For  it  holds  out  to  all  the  real  image  of  an  idealised  Humanity 
(that  is,  the  ordered  assemblage  of  all  the  brains,  wills,  and 
labours  of  the  human  race,  past,  present,  and  to  come)  as 
the  centre  whereto  all  efforts  must  converge,  and  the  source  of 
Man's  best  attainments.  It  supplies  our  intellectual  work 
at  once  with  material  and  with  purpose ;  our  emotional  zeal 
with  object  and  inspiration;  our  practical  labour  with  a 
noble  function.  This  unity  of  being  is  summed  up  in  the 
formula  —  "Act  under  the  influence  of  Affection;  and  think, 
in  order  to  act." 

Thus  understood,  Man  thinks  by  the  aid  of  Humanity, 
from  which  the  substance  of  his  thoughts  is  derived;  he 
thinks  for  Humanity,  which  alone  can  give  a  noble  purpose 
to  thought;  he  orders  his  thoughts  to  accord  with  life  by 
referring  all  to  Humanity.  Man  can  honour  and  love  Hu- 
manity, the  visible  author  and  minister  of  all  that  he  possesses 
and  hopes.  So  too  Man  works  for  Humanity,  the  natural 
object  of  all  work,  the  labour  which  alone  is  always  noble, 
always  useful,  and  never  unhappy. 

Here  is  a  true  Synthesis,  or  converging  point  in  life.  What 
other  complete  Synthesis  can  we  imagine?  Let  us  try  by 
each  of  these  three  great  faculties  of  our  nature  any  one  of  the 
great  ideas  which  have  satisfied  men  in  the  Past,  and  satisfy 
so  many  still.  Man  has  honoured  and  loved  God,  as  he  has 
honoured  and  loved  nothing  else.     Nay,  let  us  rejoice  that 


THE   HUMAN   SYNTHESIS 


93 


the  deep  human  instincts  survive  in  the  wreck  of  Theology, 
that  Man  still  can  honour  and  love  God.  But  where  is  the 
man  who  can  honestly  say,  looking  round  on  the  vast  ac- 
cumulation of  modern  knowledge,  that  he  co-ordinates  all 
his  thoughts  round  the  image  of  God,  that  the  idea  of  God 
gives  him  a  rational  theory  of  all  his  acquirements,  that  he 
thinks  for  the  service  of  God,  and  can  see  that  service  ful- 
filled in  every  thought? 

Or  who  can  say,  in  the  whirl  of  our  modern  industrial  ac- 
tivity, that  he  works  and  toils  for  God,  that  God  is  the  natural 
object  of  all  human  labour,  that  each  product  of  his  hands  is 
a  new  offering  to  his  Creator's  well-being,  that  it  is  a  comfort 
and  a  use  to  an  omnipotent  Providence  ?  Who  can  utter  any 
of  these  phrases  in  a  literal  sense,  in  any  but  a  sophistical  and 
hysterical  way? 

Turn  to  the  Metaphysical  Synthesis,  the  philosophy  of 
ultimate  being,  or  any  of  the  cloudy  theisms  of  the  day.  Who 
can  say  that  Man  thinks  by  the  aid  of  Absolute  Reason,  or  by 
a  First  Cause  so  sublime  that  does  not  interfere  with  mundane 
laws;  that  these  "defecated"  residua  of  fastidious  logic 
enable  a  man  to  co-ordinate  his  thoughts,  group  the  laws  of 
Nature,  or  give  him  the  mutual  relations  of  the  sciences  ?  And 
further,  what  mockery  is  implied  in  the  question  —  Can  any 
man  honestly  pretend  that  he  loves  the  Absolute,  or  any  such 
essence  as  he  finds  remaining  after  a  long  course  of  abstract 
meditation ;  much  less  can  any  one  say  that  the  Absolute 
is  the  natural  object  of  all  earthly  labour? 

What  a  tissue  of  verbiage  and  sophistry  do  these  grand 
"residua"  of  the  philosophers  become,  when  we  place  them 
face  to  face  with  the  other  sides  of  human  nature,  and  ask 
how  they  stand  to  affection,  and  to  work,  to  industry,  to  duty  ! 

Let  us  again  turn  to  the  Materialist  Synthesis,  if  Synthesis 
the  materialists  permit  at  all.     I  mean  by  a  materialist  syn- 


94 


PHILOSOPHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 


thesis  any  central  idea,  law,  force,  or  tendency  which  is 
supposed  to  be  the  ultimate  reality  in  the  Universe,  to  which 
all  laws  can  be  subordinated,  and  to  which  all  phenomena 
can  be  referred,  but  which  presents  us  with  no  dominant  idea 
of  Affection,  Sympathy,  and  Will.  Any  synthesis  that  omits 
these  qualities,  or  fails  to  place  them  at  the  top,  is  a  Materialist 
Synthesis. 

Now  there  are  all  kinds  of  forms  of  such  a  synthesis. 
Evolution  is  a  familiar  example.  Men  of  great  power  and 
high  character  tell  us  that  they  think  the  clearer  by  the  light 
of  Evolution,  that  all  their  thoughts  flow  from  the  centre  of 
Evolution,  that  Evolution  truly  co-ordinates  their  ideas. 
Accordingly  it  is  to  them  the  real  Synthesis,  and,  excepting 
an  ejaculation  to  save  the  Unknowable,  it  is  all  the  Synthesis 
they  need. 

Very  good !  Evolution  may  very  likely  serve  as  an  intel- 
lectual Synthesis ;  but  is  it  a  moral  and  practical  Synthesis  ? 
Can  any  man  pretend  to  say  that  he  loves,  honours,  adores 
Evolution ;  that  the  image  of  it  is  about  his  bed  and  his  path, 
in  his  down-sitting  and  in  his  up-rising,  that  it  touches  his 
heart,  rouses  him  to  noble  effort,  purifies  him  with  a  sense  of 
great  Tenderness  and  great  Self-sacrifice?  Can  any  man, 
without  laughing,  thus  speak  of  Evolution,  or  of  the  Law  of 
Differentiation,  or  of  the  Survival  of  the  Fittest?  These 
potent  generalisations  of  cosmical  science  are  discoveries 
of  a  high  order.  But  the  girl  or  the  child  whose  tender  spirit 
has  drunk  deep  at  the  fountains  which  gave  us  the  Morning 
and  the  Evening  Hymn,  reaches  to  heights  and  depths  of 
human  nature,  and  knows  vast  regions  of  truth  and  power, 
wherein  these  potent  generalisations  can  as  little  enter  as  a 
toad  or  a  piece  of  quartz. 

Much  less  can  any  say  that  Evolution,  Differentiation, 
Survival,  or  any  general  cosmical  principle  whatever  can 


THE  HUMAN  SYNTHESIS  95 

be  treated  as  the  natural  object  of  all  social  work,  that  it  can 
be  looked  on  as  the  one  aim  of  labour,  the  sanction  of  human 
industry,  the  guarantee  of  happiness  in  labour?  Does  any 
such  cosmical  principle  bring  us  nearer  by  one  jot  to  the 
settlement  of  any  single  industrial  problem?  Does  it  not 
leave  all  practical  problems  to  the  law  of  the  strongest  ? 

In  what  sense,  then,  is  Evolution  a  synthesis,  if  we  desire  to 
embrace  in  our  synthesis  the  whole  of  the  powers  of  Man  ? 
Try  any  one  of  the  metaphysical  or  the  materialist  central 
ideas,  and  ask  what  possible  power  they  can  have  over  the 
greater  outbursts  of  the  human  heart  ?  Are  we,  then,  to  tear 
up  out  of  our  idea  of  human  nature,  and  cast  aside  as  an 
effete  tendency,  together  with  slavery,  polygamy,  and  can- 
nibalism, the  world-old  instincts  of  men  and  women  for 
Devotion,  Self-sacrifice,  Adoration,  the  overmastering  passion 
of  well-doing,  and  sympathy,  and  care  for  others,  the  hum- 
bling of  the  spirit  of  self,  veneration  for  great  benevolence, 
gratitude  for  great  services  —  in  a  word,  the  outpouring 
of  the  Soul  towards  a  good  Providence,  which  has  been  known 
to  Man  since  the  days  of  the  Cave-men  under  a  thousand 
forms  of  religion  ? 

"Then,"  cry  the  orthodox,  and  those  who  imagine  they 
can  save  the  essence  of  orthodoxy,  by  enveloping  every  scien- 
tific difficulty  in  a  cloud  of  phrases,  "theology  does  give  us 
such  a  synthesis  in  the  idea  of  a  Creating  and  Ruling  God ; 
accept  with  us  this  centre  of  affections  of  which  you  admit  the 
ubiquity  and  the  power!" 

Here,  alas  !  comes  in  the  other  part  of  the  dilemma.  The 
theological  synthesis  is  just  as  flagrantly  and  hopelessly 
impotent  in  the  whole  mental  and  practical  sphere  of  Man 
as  the  materialist  synthesis  is  impotent  in  the  devotional 
sphere.  And  that  even  by  the  tacit  admission  of  theologians 
and  pietists  themselves.     In  ages  when  the  theological  idea 


g6  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

was  really  dominant,  it  did  profess  to  be  a  complete  synthesis 
of  Man's  life,  and  was  distinctly  accepted  as  such.  The 
thought  of  God,  the  love  of  God,  was  honestly  taken  by 
powerful  brains  and  characters  to  be  the  real  centre  of  all 
thoughts,  and  not  only  of  all  love  and  hope,  but  of  all  work 
and  of  all  enjoyment  also.  Abraham  and  David,  St.  Paul 
and  St.  Bernard,  Mahomet  and  Luther,  perhaps  even  Fenelon 
and  Ken,  did  literally  in  their  hearts  believe  the  love  of  God 
to  be  the  true  explanation  of  all  Man's  knowledge,  and  the 
proper  object  of  every  human  effort. 

But  now,  since  science  has  surrounded  our  lives  with  such 

a  concurrent  mass  of  correlated  law,  and  this  sense  of  law 

is  so  widespread  and  familiar  to  the  daily  thought  of  the  most 

ignorant;   now,  since  our  social  existence  has  so  developed, 

and  has  so  clothed  with  noble  colours  the  free  resources  of 

Man's  manifold  powers,  now  it  is  simply  impossible  to  find 

the  Creator  in  every  thought,  God  in  every  act.     The  most 

mystical  of  theologians,  the  most  austere  of  devotees,  does 

not  ask  us  to  do  so.     Common  sense  is  too  overwhelming 

to  be  resisted.     Piety  itself  adopts  its  language;    orthodox 

authority   deprecates   the    exaggeration    of   theology.     The 

Pope  alone  holds  out,  and  discharges  a  Syllabus  now  and  then. 

But  bishops,  priests,  and  deacons,  for  the  most  part,  sweep 

theology  away  from  the  whole  field  of  systematic  thought  and 

active  life.     Science,  they  say,  explains  the  laws  of  Nature 

and  the  laws  of  society;    social  motives    are    an    adequate 

explanation  of  worldly  activity.     All  we  ask,  say  they,  as 

sensible  theologians,  is  to  reserve  the  idea  of  God  and  the 

Scheme  of  Man's  Salvation  for  the  hours  that  are  given  to 

meditation  and  prayer,  to  the  spiritual  sphere  alone. 

In  other  words,  the  idea  of  God,  which,  when  theology 
was  a  Synthesis,  filled  the  whole  human  sphere,  has  now, 
even  in  the  hearts  of  the  most  devout,  shrunk  into  one  part 


THE  HUMAN   SYNTHESIS  97 

of  human  nature,  one  aspect  of  life,  and  that  one  which  all 
but  a  Trappist  monk  or  an  Indian  fakir  would  dmit  to  be 
an  occasional,  not  a  continuous,  aspect  of  life.  It  follows 
that  Theology,  or  the  idea  of  Divine  Providence,  does  not 
now  pretend  to  supply  Man  with  a  complete  Synthesis  for  his 
whole  life,  even  in  the  minds  of  those  who  make  the  largest 
claims  for  Divine  Providence,  and  who  feel  its  power  over 
their  hearts  most  profoundly  and  most  constantly. 

This,  at  length,  is  the  conclusion  to  which  our  argument 
has  led  us.  There  is  discoverable  in  human  and  mundane 
things  no  Synthesis  but  one,  and  that  is  a  Human  Synthesis. 
A  true  synthesis  must,  if  it  is  to  concentrate  human  life,  be 
coextensive  with  human  nature;  it  must  be  real;  it  must 
perfectly  submit  to  logical  verification;  it  must  directly 
appeal  to  the  whole  range  of  thought,  of  affection,  of  energy; 
it  must  harmonise  all  these  to  one  end ;  and  finally,  that  one 
end  must  be  such  as  can  inspire  our  noblest  emotions  of  Love 
and  Veneration.  The  tests  of  a  true  synthesis  are  these : 
completeness,  reality,  truth,  unity,  sympathy.  These  tests 
and  qualities  are  presented,  we  say,  by  one  ideal  alone,  the 
ideal  of  a  transfigured  Humanity,  in  which  the  Past  and  the 
Future  are  bound  up,  in  which  the  life  of  each  one  of  us  is 
incorporated  and  dignified,  by  which  its  fruits  may  be  in- 
definitely continued. 


H 


VI 

LEWES'  PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND  * 

Amidst  all  the  dispersive  tendencies  of  the  spirit  of  detail 
in  science  we  may  note  a  growing  anxiety  to  secure  a  con- 
structive philosophy.  This  thirst  after  an  organisation  of 
knowledge  is  becoming  more  conscious  and  more  defined, 
even  whilst  the  daily  accumulation  of  materials  seems  to 
make  the  task  more  severe.  And  the  sphere  which  this 
constructive  tendency  is  claiming  for  itself  grows  ever  wider, 
until  it  sweeps  into  its  domain  not  merely  knowledge,  but 
life.  It  is  towards  a  Religion  as  much  as  a  Philosophy  that 
systematic  thought  is  tending,  towards  a  co-ordination  of 
society  as  well  as  towards  a  co-ordination  of  ideas.  It  is  now 
a  quarter  of  a  century  since  Auguste  Comte  declared  that 
the  end  of  true  Philosophy  was  to  organise  human  life  in  all 
its  aspects  collectively,  whether  intellectual,  affective,  or 
active.  And  a  stimulus  has  thereby  been  given  to  all  the 
higher  thought  of  the  generation,  even  amongst  those  who 
were  willing  to  accept  nothing  from  the  founder  of  Positivism. 

In  Germany,  Hegel,  from  a  different  point  of  view,  directed 
the  activity  of  thought  towards  an  arrangement  of  all  human 
ideas,  at  once  comprehensive  and  organic.  In  all  parts  of 
Europe,  Philosophy  and  Science  have  long  been  showing 
a  disposition  not  only  to  maintain  the  independence  of  their 
specific  territory  from  the  invasion  of  Religion,  but  to  invade 

*  Problems  of  Life  ani  Mind,  by  George  Henry  Lewes.  First  Series. 
The  Foundation  of  a  Creed,  vol.  i.     Second  edition.     Triibner.     1874. 

98 


PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND  99 

and  annex  the  religious  kingdom  for  themselves.  In  our 
own  country,  ]Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,  in  the  words  of  Mr. 
Lewes,  "is  now  for  the  first  time  deliberately  making  the 
attempt  to  found  a  Philosophy."  Students  of  his  system, 
which  he  calls  "synthetic  philosophy,"  do  not  forget  that  it 
opens  with  a  scheme  for  the  reconciliation  of  Science  with 
Religion  —  that  "weft  running  through  the  warp  of  human 
history"  —  and  that  he  adds  a  new  ecclesiastical,  ceremonial, 
and  industrial  organisation.  On  every  side  this  synthetic 
character  of  thought  is  working  itself  to  the  front.  The 
higher  scientific  thought  is  more  and  more  occupied  with 
problems  of  the  correlation,  equivalence,  and  correspondence 
of  forces,  of  the  evolution,  sequences,  and  homologies  of 
organic  and  inorganic  life.  The  higher  philosophy  now 
everywhere  starts  with  a  religion,  and  ends  with  a  synthesis  of 
society.  Philosophy  is  thus  visibly  transforming  itself. 
Its  business  is  no  longer  confined  to  generalise  science.  It 
is  seeking  to  found  a  system  of  Life. 

This  tendency  is  most  strikingly  displayed  in  Mr.  Lewes' 
last  work;  and  in  some  respects  he  must  be  said  to  carry 
the  religious  claim  of  positive  philosophy  far  higher  than  has 
yet  been  done  by  any  English  man  of  science.  Most  significant 
is  the  title  of  the  book  Problems  0}  Life  and  Mind  —  the 
Foundations  of  a  Creed.  And  it  opens  with  the  statement  that 
"the  great  desire  of  this  age  is  for  a  doctrine  which  may  serve 
to  condense  our  knowledge,  guide  our  researches,  and  shape 
our  lives,  so  that  Conduct  may  really  be  the  consequence  of 
Belief."  Mr.  Lewes  follows  those  who  "consider  that  Reli- 
gion will  continue  to  regulate  the  evolution  of  Humanity"; 
occupying  a  position  similar  to  the  one  it  occupied  in  the 
past,  and  express  the  highest  thought  of  the  time  (p.  3).  It  will 
be  a  transformed  Religion,  "a  Religion  founded  on  Science 
expressing  at  each  stage  what  is  known  of  the  world  and  of 


lOO  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

Man"  (id).  The  precise  bearing  of  the  book  before  us  upon 
this  general  conception  of  Philosophy  as  the  reconciliation 
or  rather  consolidation  of  religion  with  science,  may  be 
gathered  from  the  following  passage :  — 

In  conclusion,  I  may  here  simply  state  my  conviction  that  the  phi- 
losophy, in  the  construction  of  which  the  efforts  of  all  nations  converge, 
is  that  positive  philosophy  which  began  with  Kepler  and  Galileo,  Des- 
cartes and  Bacon,  and  was  first  reduced  to  a  system  by  Auguste  Comte; 
the  doctrine  embracing  the  world,  man,  and  society  on  one  homogeneous 
method.  The  extension  and  perfection  of  this  doctrine  is  the  work  of 
the  future.  The  following  pages  are  animated  by  the  desire  of  extend- 
ing positive  procedures  to  those  outlying  questions  which  hitherto  have 
been  either  ignored,  or  pronounced  incapable  of  incorporation  with  the 
positive  doctrine  (page  86). 

In  the  face  of  a  passage  like  this,  consistent  as  it  is  with 
every  word  in  the  volume  before  us,  it  was  a  bold  rather  than 
a  happy  thought  to  announce  to  the  world,  as  has  been  done 
in  more  than  one  quarter,  that  Mr.  Lewes  had  recanted  his 
empirical  philosophy,  and  had  become  a  convert  to  the  Spec- 
ulative method  of  a  priori  Metaphysics.  There  was  joy 
in  the  Hegelian  heaven  over  the  one  Positivist  who  had  re- 
pented more  than  over  the  ninety  and  nine  just  metaphysicians 
who  need  no  repentance.  Such  unusual  license  even  for 
a  priori  speculation  suggested  the  idea  that  some  serene  jest 
had  been  evolved  among  the  denizens  of  that  beatific  cloud- 
land,  but  a  little  collation  of  pages  disclosed  the  fact  that  the 
conversion  of  Mr.  Lewes  had  been  deduced  from  a  merely 
empirical  confusion  of  his  words.  A  contemporary,  who 
is  wont  to  treat  of  the  higher  philosophy  with  more  than  phil- 
osophic gravity,  announced  with  all  the  air  of  chastened  ex- 
ultation, that  Mr.  Lewes  emphatically  renounced  what  he 
had  himself  described  as  "the  cardinal  position  of  the  Positive 
Philo-sophy,"  and  even  gave  in  his  adhesion  to  the  objective 
logic  of  Hegel. 


PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND  10 1 

Turning  to  the  pages  of  Mr.  Lewes,  what  we  found  him 
asserting  was,  that  "the  exclusion  of  all  metempirical  ques- 
tions, and  the  rejection  of  the  metempirical  method,  is  the 
cardinal  position  of  the  Positive  Philosophy"  (p.  62).  This 
is  of  course  quite  true,  but  neither  in  this  passage,  nor  in  any 
word  of  the  entire  volume,  is  there  the  remotest  suggestion 
that  Mr.  Lewes  himself  adopts  either  the  metempirical 
method,  or  metempirical  questions.  His  book,  from  be- 
ginning to  end,  is  a  protest  against  both.  His  first  rule  of 
philosophy  is  this  —  "No  problem  to  be  mooted  unless  it  be 
presented  in  terms  0}  experience,  and  be  capable  of  empirical 
investigation^^  (p.  89).  It  is  singular  how  any  one  who  had 
got  as  far  as  page  89  of  Mr.  Lewes'  book  could  seriously  assure 
us  that  he  had  abandoned  "the  cardinal  position  of  the  posi- 
tive philosophy,"  by  which  he  tells  us  that  he  means  the 
exclusion  of  all  metempirical  methods.  What  Mr.  Lewes 
does  say  that  he  abandons  is  simply  the  opinion  that  certain 
problems  —  Matter,  Force,  Cause,  etc.  —  are  incapable  of 
being  treated  on  empirical  or  positive  methods.  He  dissents 
from  Comte  so  far  in  believing  that  there  are  further  grounds 
available  for  positive  methods  to  occupy,  but  this  opinion  as 
to  the  extent  of  its  area  is  not  a  "cardinal  position  of 
the  positive  philosophy,"  nor  does  Mr.  Lewes  ever  speak  of 
it  as  such.  In  a  word,  when  Mr.  Lewes  tells  us  that  the 
positive  philosophy  can  solve  more  questions  than  even  M, 
Comte  thought  it  could,  we  are  told  that  he  is  thereby  aban- 
doning "the  cardinal  position  of  the  positive  philosophy." 

In  the  same  way  we  are  assured  that  Mr.  Lewes  is  a  con- 
vert to  the  objective  Logic  of  Hegel,  though  on  page  19  he 
tells  us  that  Hegel  "reverses  the  principle  I  am  here  proclaim- 
ing"; and  though  he  cites  with  approval  Trcndlcnbcrg's 
opinion  respecting  the  Hegelian  procedure,  "that  it  cannot 
give  us  what  it  j)romises,  because  its  promises  are  beyond 


I02  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON    SENSE 

human  scope  "  (page  26).  Our  Hegelian  friends  have  as  good 
ground  for  assuring  us  that  Mr.  Lewes  has  abandoned  the 
positive  philosophy  and  adopted  the  Logic  of  Hegel,  as  the 
Pope  would  have  for  assuring  us  that  he  had  converted 
Mr.  Lewes  to  the  Syllabus,  inasmuch  as  he  found  in  the 
book  before  us,  that  "Religion  will  continue  to  regulate  the 
evolution  of  Humanity." 

But  to  return  to  the  serious  consideration  of  Mr.  Lewes' 
method.  It  may  be  simply  stated  thus :  —  Certain  meta- 
physical problems  of  Matter,  Force,  Cause,  Law,  Soul,  etc., 
have  been  hitherto  regarded  as  outside  the  pale  of  science, 
and  have  been  treated  as  insoluble  by  the  Philosophy  of 
Experience.  Mr.  Lewes  himself  has  long  regarded  them  as 
insoluble,  and  his  well-known  history  of  Philosophy  is  a  series 
of  refutations  of  all  the  solutions  offered  on  unscientific 
methods.  He  now  thinks  that  these  problems,  or  certain 
aspects  of  them,  can  be  brought  within  the  pale  of  science, 
and  can  be  treated  strictly  on  scientific  methods  by  the  canons 
of  the  Philosophy  of  Experience.  There  is  in  this  proposal 
no  trace  of  abandonment,  either  of  the  method  or  the 
canons  of  positive  reasoning.  On  the  contrary,  he  has 
never  insisted  upon  these  with  so  much  precision  or  with 
equal  elaboration.  He  calls  it  no  retreat,  but  a  change  of 
front.  Indeed,  it  is  rather  a  movement  forward  than  a 
movement  back. 

That  which  is  new  is  the  attempt  to  extend  the  scientific 
analysis  to  questions  which  science  has  hitherto  left  to  Meta- 
physics. In  his  own  words,  "the  novelty  of  the  procedure 
followed  in  this  work  consists  in  treating  these  problems  on 
the  same  method  as  that  followed  in  science."  The  object 
proposed  is  to  clear  the  ground  of  the  metaphysical  obstacles 
to  thought,  by  bringing  them  under  the  terms  and  methods 
which  extend  to  all  other  thought;    and  to  wrest  its  last 


PROBLEMS   OF   LIFE  AND   MLSTD  IO3 

ground  from  the  a  priori  philosophy  by  reducing  it  to  the 
forms  of  a  posteriori  reasoning.  This  claim  would  amount, 
as  Professor  ClilTord  has  said,  to  a  revolution  in  Psychology. 
But  the  novelty,  if  the  claim  is  made  good,  consists  in  the 
application  of  an  old  method  of  philosophy  to  a  field  in  which 
it  has  not  been  attempted,  and  not,  as  was  so  crudely  sug- 
gested, in  giving  up  any  part  of  the  method  of  which  Mr. 
Lewes  is  a  prominent  exponent. 

The  present  writer  must  here  pause  to  express  his  envy 
for  those  accomplished  critics  who  master  a  new  presentation 
in  philosophy  or  logic  along  with  the  morning  paper,  and 
have  labelled  it  for  ever  in  a  dozen  trenchant  sentences  before 
they  sit  down  to  dinner.  When,  as  it  sometimes  happens, 
even  in  utilitarian  England,  a  man  of  rare  erudition  and 
acuteness,  who  has  passed  the  best  years  of  his  life  inter  apices 
philosophicE,  finally  resumes  in  meditated  phrases  the  sum 
of  all  his  thoughts,  when  he  presents  to  us  a  new  method 
of  research,  or  puts  old  methods  to  new  uses,  it  is  perhaps 
not  a  morning's  work  duly  to  master  his  meaning,  nor  is  his 
place  in  philosophy  to  be  assigned  with  the  same  lordly 
facility  with  which  a  place  in  the  editorial  heaven  or  hell  is 
adjudged  to  the  last  new  novel. 

The  present  writer  will  excuse  himself  from  any  ex  cathedrd 
judgment  how  far  Mr.  Lewes  has  effected  the  revolution  in 
Psychology  which  he  claims ;  and  if  he  has  done  so,  what  is 
its  precise  philosophical  utility.  Whether  or  not  Mr.  Lewes 
has  solved  the  questions  which  metaphysicians  have  attacked 
for  so  many  ages  in  vain,  can  indeed  be  hardly  determined 
until  we  see  the  use  which  he  makes  of  his  solutions  in  the 
volumes  which  are  yet  to  appear.  Whether  he  has  solved 
them  to  the  satisfaction  of  metaphysicians,  and  thus,  as  he 
trusts,  has  assuaged  the  thirst  which  eternally  calls  for  satis- 
faction, can  only  be  decided  when  time  has  shown  us  if  the 


I04  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

minds  which  are  eager  with  these  questions  are  content  to 
rest  with  the  answers  that  he  gives  them. 

One  thing  is  sufficiently  clear.  Although  Mr.  Lewes  has 
retained  the  name  of  Metaphysics,  and  offers  his  solution  of 
what  are  universally  called  the  problems  of  Metaphysics, 
he  shows  himself  from  title-page  to  colophon  an  unflinching 
adherent  of  the  positive  methods,  and  never  travels  a  hair's- 
breadth  from  his  canons  which  bind  truth  to  experience. 
In  his  claim  to  have  swept  metaphysics  into  the  fold  of  science, 
he  is  never  found  to  be  using  metempirical  expedients. 
Whether  or  not  he  has  domesticated  the  untamed  metaphys- 
ical Pegasus,  and  harnessed  him  to  the  car  of  terrestrial 
science,  we  may  leave  to  the  future  to  decide;  but  we  can 
say  at  once  that  he  himself  has  never  mounted  the  wild 
charger  into  the  realms  of  cloudland,  and  if  he  has  really 
got  Pegasus  as  completely  in  hand  as  he  thinks,  he  himself  is 
certainly  safe  on  mother  earth. 

With  regard  to  the  claim  of  novelty  in  the  application  of 
scientific  procedures  to  metaphysical  problems,  it  must  be 
taken  in  all  the  limitations  imposed  by  the  question  of  what, 
in  Mr.  Lewes'  hands,  these  metaphysical  problems  really 
amount  to.  Now,  it  is  certain  that  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,  in 
his  Synthetic  Philosophy  generally,  and  in  his  Psychology 
in  particular,  has  examined  nearly  all  the  problems  of  Mr. 
Lewes'  present  volume,  and  certainly  he  has  treated  them  on 
kindred  data  and  with  similar  methods.  And  although 
Mr.  Spencer  has  relegated  in  his  First  Principles  certain 
questions  to  the  insoluble  and  Unknowable,  whilst  Mr. 
Lewes  appears  to  hold  them  capable  of  some  scientific  solu- 
tion ;  yet  the  difference  between  the  two  points  of  view  does 
not  appear  to  be  great,  when  we  observe  that  Mr.  Lewes 
admits  in  every  one  of  these  questions  a  transcendental  and 
unknowable  element  which  he  ejects  from  the  field,  and  this 


PROBLEMS  OF   LIFE  AND   MIND  I05 

transcendental  element  is  precisely  that  part  of  the  question 
of  which  solution  is  specially  craved. 

Again,  when  Mr.  Lewes  argues  against  Comte's  rejection 
of  metaphysical  problems,  and  claims  to  have  now  for  the 
first  time  brought  them  under  positive  treatment,  it  will  not 
be  forgotten  that  throughout  the  Politique  Positive  nearly 
all  the  questions  treated  in  this  volume  by  Mr.  Lewes  have 
been  discussed  by  Comte,  not  as  is  here  done  explicitly  and 
apart  from  their  application  to  the  sciences,  but  implicitly 
and  along  with  their  practical  working.  This  is  obviously 
true  of  the  Rules  of  Philosophising  (pp.  88-106),  which  in 
some  sort  answer  to  the  Philosophie  premihre  of  Comte; 
and  so  almost  the  whole  of  the  points  noticed  in  Problem  I. 
(which  occupies  more  than  half  the  volume)  are  questions 
which  have  been  more  or  less  distinctly  treated  by  Comte. 
The  real  difference  between  Mr.  Lewes'  view  and  that  of 
Comte  is  not  that  Mr.  Lewes  has  treated  problems  which 
Comte  has  ignored,  but  rather  that  Mr.  Lewes,  like  Mr. 
Spencer,  has  placed  their  treatment  in  a  regularly  methodised 
department,  instead  of  treating  them  incidentally  amongst 
the  sciences,  and  that  Mr.  Lewes  thinks  there  should  be  a 
special  Logic  of  those  highest  generalisations,  whilst  Comte 
would  leave  them  distributed  throughout  the  logic  of  the 
different  sciences.  This  is,  no  doubt,  a  very  real  and  impor- 
tant difference;  but  it  is  a  difference  of  philosophical  ar- 
rangement, not  a  difference  of  philosophical  aim. 

One  remark  I  have  to  offer  to  Mr.  Lewes'  consideration. 
He  asserts  a  claim  to  have  treated  metaphysical  problems 
on  strictly  scientific  methods;  and  his  purpose  is  to  put  an 
end  for  ever  to  the  disturbance  caused  to  thought  by  the 
presence  of  unsatisfied  questions  that  will  not  be  suppressed. 
Metaphysics,  he  says,  must  be  transformed  or  stamped  out  of 
existence.     The  latter  process  has  not   succeeded,  and  he 


I06  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

proposes  to  try  the  former.  To  this  end  his  method  is  to 
eject  from  the  field  in  every  problem  the  unknowable  ele- 
ment. He  calls  this  the  transcendental  element,  and  the 
"unexplored  remainder";  and  he  shows  how  familiar  to 
mathematicians  is  the  procedure  of  working  problems  with 
unknown  quantities,  whilst  taking  care  that  these  elements 
are  not  allowed  to  disturb  the  calculations  of  the  known 
quantities.  In  every  question  presented  to  us,  says  Mr. 
Lewes,  there  is  this  transcendental  element,  "elements  lying 
beyond  all  possible  appreciation,  because  incapable  of  being 
brought  within  the  range  of  sense  and  inference"  —  the 
unknowable  in  fact.  These,  he  says,  are  to  be  set  aside, 
and  are  not  allowed  in  any  way  to  enter  into  the  explanation. 
These  metaphysical  problems,  he  says.  Matter  and  Motion, 
Force  and  Cause,  have  also  their  transcendental  elements; 
and  it  is  the  province  of  metaphysics  to  demarcate  these 
from  the  known  and  knowable  elements.  Mr.  Lewes' 
method  is  to  disengage  from  each  of  these  problems  the  un- 
knowable element,  "the  elements  that  lie  beyond  all  reduction 
to  experience,"  and  then  to  solve  the  remainder  of  the  prob- 
lem. Every  question,  he  says,  when  stated  in  terms  of  ex- 
perience, is  capable  of  an  answer  on  the  experiential  method. 
And  no  doubt  Mr.  Lewes  has  abundantly  satisfied  us  of  this. 
But  will  this  satisfy  the  metaphysical  minds  who  are  wont  to 
propound  these  problems?  Is  it  not  precisely  this  tran- 
scendental, this  irreducible,  this  supra-experiential,  this  un- 
knowable element  which  is  the  very  thing  they  cherish? 
The  true  metaphysician  regards  it  as  the  function  of  Phi- 
losophy to  treat  this  very  transcendental  element  in  its  de- 
tachment apart  from  experience.  He  says  if  you  can  state 
it  in  terms  of  experience,  that  alone  shows  that  you  have 
not  got  hold  of  the  true  problem  at  all.  It  is  the  ungraspable, 
the  unstateable,  the  unrelated,  the  un-anything  —  das  un- 


PROBLEMS   OF   LIFE  AND   MIND  IO7 

begreifiches  Geheimniss  —  which  metaphysics  vindicate  as 
their  own.  Kant  said  that  "the  axioms  and  principles  of 
Metaphysics  must  never  be  drawn  from  experience."  And 
Hegel  places  the  great  problems,  Freedom,  ]\Iind,  God,  "on 
a  ground  which  belongs  not  to  experience,"  for  empiricism, 
he  thinks,  only  gropes,  instead  of  seeking  truth  in  Thought 
itself. 

The  whole  line  of  metaphysicians  after  them  continue  to 
ask  what  is  this  transcendental  element  in  all  questions. 
They  are  the  daughters  of  the  horse-leech,  whose  cry  is. 
Give,  give;  the  abysmal  maw  of  your  true  metaphysician 
simply  gapes  after  this  unknowable  element  just  because  it  is 
infinite,  because  it  lies  beyond  all  possible  appreciation.  In 
the  language  of  his  great  master,  "you  might  as  well  attempt 
to  squeeze  water  out  of  a  pumice-stone  as  to  get  necessary 
and  universal  truth  through  experience."  As  Mr.  Lewes 
points  out,  speculation  craves  a  vision  of  the  thing  in  itself, 
i.e.  unrelated,  or,  in  other  words,  as  it  does  not  and  cannot 
exist.  Of  what  avail,  then,  is  it  to  tell  a  man  in  this  frame 
of  mind  to  state  the  problem  in  terms  of  experience,  and  then 
to  solve  it  by  the  canons  of  experience ;  to  disengage  the  un- 
knowable element,  and  then  throw  it  away?  That  which 
Mr.  Lewes  tells  him  to  throw  away  as  so  much  offal  is  his 
choice  bit;  Mr.  Lewes'  "unexplored  remainder"  is  pre- 
cisely his  gucBsitum  in  its  true  and  pure  form.  To  reduce 
the  problem  to  terms  of  experience  is  just  to  kill  the  goose  in 
search  of  the  golden  egg  of  metaphysics. 

So  long  as  there  is  an  unknown  element,  so  long  the  spec- 
ulative craving  will  remain  unsatisfied.  To  tell  the  true 
metaphysician  that  the  unknown  element  is  an  unknowable 
element,  is  no  satisfaction.  It  is  like  telling  a  man  in  a  fever 
to  eat  a  mutton  chop  and  not  to  think  about  drinking,  as  no 
drinking  can  ever  slake  his  thirst.     Mr.  Lewes  will  hardly 


I08  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

satisfy  the  fever  patient  better  than  Comte  himself.  Comte 
told  him  that  his  metaphysical  thirst  was  incapable  of  being 
satisfied.  Mr.  Lewes  tells  him  his  metaphysical  thirst 
has  an  element  incapable  of  being  satisfied.  Comte  said, 
Leave  alone  the  insoluble  problem.  Mr.  Lewes  says,  Leave 
alone  the  insoluble  part  of  the  problem.  Ah !  cries  the 
metaphysical  opium-eater,  It  is  just  the  unknowable  which 
is  the  real  charm ;  it  is  that  insoluble  which  is  the  problem. 
Alas!  it  is  the  old  fight  between  the  mammal  and  the 
fish.  "Come  out  of  that  watery  element,"  cries  Mr. 
Lewes  to  his  piscine  antagonist,  "and  we  will  settle 
matters  on  terra  firma  for  ever."  "It  can  only  be  settled 
in  the  water,^'  croaks  the  fish;  and  executes  a  spiral  wholly 
beyond  mammalian  resources.  "If  this  is  Philosophy,  we 
do  not  know  what  Philosophy  is!"  groaned  the  Spectator 
out  of  the  depths  of  its  theological-metaphysical  cavern. 
And  it  never  said  a  truer  word. 

At  the  same  time,  even  if  the  metaphysical  goose  be  not 
found  to  be  persuaded  to  come  flapping  to  be  killed  at  the 
dilly-dilly  call  of  experience,  there  is  no  doubt  of  the  great 
value  of  the  process  Mr.  Lewes  has  employed  in  separating 
the  intelligible  from  the  unintelligible  part  of  the  meta- 
physical problem.  Both  he  and  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  have 
done  an  inestimable  service  to  minds  wavering  between 
scientific  and  unscientific  habits  of  reasoning,  by  forcing  the 
unscientific  aspect  of  these  questions  into  the  most  exact 
and  limited  ground,  and  by  pushing  the  scientific  aspect  of 
them  to  the  last  possible  point  that  it  can  reach.  Mr.  Lewes' 
singular  brilliancy  of  illustration,  and  that  sympathetic 
interest  of  his  in  the  views  he  cannot  share,  ought  to  give  him 
unusual  power  to  reach  minds  wandering  in  the  transcenden- 
tal wilderness.  His  proposal  to  retain  the  word  metaphysics 
for  "the  ultimate  generalisations  of  research,"  and  to  coin  the 


PROBLEMS   OF   LIFE   AND   MIND  IO9 

word  metempirics  for  all  that  transcends  the  data  of  expe- 
rience, is  most  useful  in  his  hands,  as  clearing  up  ideas  and 
assisting  to  separate  the  elements  which  are  soluble  from 
those  which  are  insoluble,  even  if  he  does  not  succeed  in 
imposing  them  on  Philosophy.  The  poor  metaphysician 
has  perhaps  never  before  been  so  pushed,  and  hedged,  and 
parried  into  the  exact  statement  of  his  problem.  And  it  is 
hard  to  say  what  more  can  be  done.  We  find  him  driven 
back  as  in  a  sort  of  stale-mate  to  his  last  foothold  of  metem- 
pirics, where,  indeed,  no  one  can  touch  him,  but  whence  he 
cannot  escape,  and  where  he  can  reach  nothing. 

An  interesting  chapter  in  Mr.  Lewes'  book  is  that  on  the 
Rules  of  Philosophising  (pp.  88-106),  in  which  he  extends 
the  scope  and  amplifies  the  use  of  Newton's  famous  four 
rules  prefixed  to  the  third  book  of  the  Principia.  Newton 
was  obviously  collecting  only  those  generalisations  which 
were  immediately  required  for  his  purpose,  and  was  not  con- 
structing a  complete  system  of  philosophic  generalisations. 
Mr.  Lewes,  in  his  fifteen  rules,  is  also  preparing  the  ground 
for  his  own  logical  method  with  a  view  to  his  immediate 
purpose.  Mr.  Lewes  does  not  present  them  as  an  exhaus- 
tive collection  of  philosophical  canons,  and  several  of  them, 
such  as  those  numbered  7,  8,  9,  10,  12,  are  apparently  cor- 
ollaries from  other  more  general  rules.  A  general  comparison 
of  these  rules  with  the  fifteen  rules  of  Comte,  which  he  calls 
Philosophie  premihe  {Pol.  Pos.  iv.  c.  3),  some  of  which  Mr. 
Lewes  embodies,  throws  much  light  on  the  purpose  and  scope 
of  all  such  rules.  Mr.  Lewes'  rules  are  apparently  those 
canons  of  logic  and  checks  upon  error  which  will  prove  most 
useful  for  a  given  class  of  researches,  and  therefore  are  entirely 
logical  or  subjective.  Comtc's  fifteen  rules  profess  to  be  the 
most  dominant  generalisations,  both  in  the  results  and  in  the 
methods  of  science,  and  are  consequently  both  objective 


no  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

and  subjective,  some  of  them,  in  fact,  being  laws  of  history 
or  social  economy.  Nothing  could  bring  out  more  strongly 
Mr.  Lewes'  divergence  from  Comte  in  making  these  highest 
generalisations  a  special  department  or  discipline.  And  in 
fact  it  would  appear  to  us  that  this  is  the  main  logical  dif- 
ference between  Mr.  Lewes  and  Comte,  that  Mr.  Lewes 
would  open  the  roll  of  Philosophy  with  a  systematic  treatment 
of  the  highest  generalisations  of  thought,  and  an  independent 
organon  of  proof,  whilst  in  Comte  very  much  the  same 
problems,  and  very  much  the  same  conclusions,  may  be 
found  embodied  in  his  entire  curriculum  of  the  sciences. 

With  regard  to  Mr.  Lewes'  treatment  of  the  question 
between  realism  and  idealism,  how  far,  that  is,  does  our  mental 
picture  of  the  Cosmos  correspond  with  an  objective  reality, 
the  question  is  in  what  degree  Mr.  Lewes'  conception  of 
reasoned  realism  differs  from  that  transfigured  realism  which 
Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  has  expounded  in  one  of  the  most 
luminous  arguments  of  his  work,^  an  argument  which  alone 
would  mark  him  as  one  of  the  greatest  masters  of  English 
philosophical  language.  Mr.  Lewes'  conclusion  is  that 
"the  world  conceived  by  us,  the  world  in  thought,  is  demon- 
strably not  a  picture  of  the  existence  lying  outside  of  us,  and 
unrelated  to  us :  it  is  a  transfiguration  effected  by  the  ideal 
construction  of  real  presentation  in  Feeling."  This  surely 
is  Mr.  Spencer's  transfigured  realism,  or  would  be  if  we 
substituted  "symbolical"  for  "real"  presentation,  perhaps 
a  very  minor  difference. 

Nor  is  this  view  divergent  from  Comte's  notion  of  the 
external  world  being  seen  transformed  and  as  pictured  in  a 
mirror  by  the  human  intelligence,  so  that  the  laws  of  science 
are  a  representation  of  the  order  of  the  Cosmos  only  to  the 
degree  that  we  need  to  know  it.     As  a  follower  of  Comte, 

*  Psychology,  part  vii.  c.  19. 


PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND  III 

perhaps,  one  might  object  to  Mr.  Spencer's  transfigured 
realism,  and  to  Mr.  Lewes'  reasoned  realism,  that  the  one 
assumes  a  realism  of  the  external  somewhat  too  absolutely, 
whilst  the  other  assumes  the  transformation  of  the  picture 
somewhat  too  positively.  A  more  hypothetical  realism, 
or  practical  realism,  still  satisfies  the  present  writer,  viz. 
that  our  scientific  conceptions  within  have  a  good  working 
correspondence  with  an  (assumed)  reality  without :  it  not 
concerning  us,  and  we  having  no  means  of  knowing,  whether 
the  absolute  correspondence  between  them  be  great  or  small, 
or  whether  there  be  any  absolute  correspondence  at  all. 
All  that  we  need  is  the  utmost  practical  correspondence  that 
experience  shows  us  to  be  useful. 

Mr.  Lewes'  treatment  of  the  whole  question  of  the  rela- 
tivity of  knowledge,  and  of  the  sensational  and  a  priori 
hypothesis,  is  particularly  instructive,  more  especially  as  it 
leads  us  up  to  a  real  reconciliation  and  amalgamation  of  the 
two  points  of  view,  such  as  to  point  to  the  time  when  we  shall 
cease  to  be  troubled  with  further  debate.  On  this  and  the 
kindred  questions  of  realism,  on  the  meaning  of  law,  cause, 
force,  and  the  like,  it  is  cheering  to  find  how  steadily  the  field 
of  divergence  is  narrowing  itself  in  modern  thought.  There 
arc  points  and  aspects  still  in  debate,  modes  of  treatment 
and  niceties  of  language  yet  unsettled ;  but  for  all  those  who 
start  out  from  a  scientific  basis  at  all,  the  real  convergences 
are  more  striking  than  the  minor  divergences.  Thus  Mr. 
Lewes'  very  ingenious  and  interesting  chapter  on  the  use 
and  abuse  of  hypothesis,  in  which  he  argues  against  restric- 
tions imposed  on  it  by  Comte  and  Alill,  is  suggestive,  as 
showing  what  are  the  kind  of  theoretic  difi'erenccs  formulated 
by  men,  all  of  whom  in  practice  follow  much  the  same 
canons. 

Rut  the  part  of  Mr.  Lewes'  book  which  he  appears  to  have 


112  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

worked  with  the  greatest  animation,  and  which  is  certainly 
the  most  brilliant,  is  that  which  treats  of  the  ideal  construc- 
tion in  science.  Without  asserting  that  Mr.  Lewes  has  put 
this  view  in  any  new  form,  it  has  perhaps  never  been  ex- 
pounded to  the  world  in  so  persuasive  and  telling  a  manner. 
And  it  needed  this  exposition,  for  although  men  of  science 
for  the  most  part  are  as  familiar  in  theory  as  they  are  in 
practice  with  the  scientific  use  of  the  imagination,  the  idea 
that  positive  science  and  positive  philosophy  is  necessarily 
materialistic,  is  still  a  commonplace  not  only  with  theologians 
and  the  vulgar,  but  even  with  intelligent  idealists.  An 
Hegelian  who  for  a  wonder  can  write  not  only  intelligibly 
but  elegantly,  Mr.  William  Graham,  has  lately  spoken  of 
"the  Positivism  of  Comte,  which  puts  its  ban  on  the  higher 
Philosophy,  which  will  feed  man's  Thought  only  on  perish- 
ing phenomena,  and  bids  his  Soul  dream  only  of  material 
comfort."  ^  And  there  are  still  educated  people  who  honestly 
believe  that  the  philosophy  of  experience  limits  itself  to  what 
it  can  see  and  touch,  and  refuses  to  quit  the  sphere  of  the 
senses. 

It  may  do  good  to  such,  if  anything  can  do  them  good,  to 
go  through  Mr.  Lewes'  vindication  of  the  Idealism  of  Science, 
as  coming  from  one  whom  they  are  wont  to  call  materialist, 
positivist,  sensationalist,  and  all  the  other  names  at  the  com- 
mand of  the  "higher  Philosophy."  As  Mr.  Lewes  shows, 
all  science  is  an  ideal  construction  very  far  removed  from  a 
real  transcript  of  facts.  "Its  most  absolute  conclusions  are 
formed  from  abstractions  expressing  modes  of  existence  which 
never  were,  and  never  could  be,  real ;  and  are  very  often  at 
variance  with  sensible  experience."  "Were  the  whole  circle 
of  the  sciences  to  pass  before  us,  each  would  in  turn  display 
the  essentially   ideal   nature  of  its  construction,  and  wide 

*  Idealism,  by  William  Graham.     Longmans,  1872. 


PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND   MIND  II3 

departure  from  reality,  either  in  its  abstractions  or  in  its 
hypotheses."  And,  in  Mr.  Lewes'  view,  the  first  step  to- 
wards scientific  certainty  must  be  taken  in  a  fiction,  by  an 
ideal  type,  or  a  bare  hypothesis.  "Science  is  in  no  respect 
a  plain  transcript  of  Reality,  in  no  respect  a  picture  of  the 
External  Order,  but  wholly  an  ideal  construction,  in  which 
the  manifold  relations  of  Reals  are  taken  up  and  assimilated 
by  the  mind,  and  then  transformed  into  relations  of  ideas, 
so  that  the  world  of  sense  is  changed  into  the  world  of 
Thought." 

A  statement  like  this  ought  to  satisfy  the  most  seraphic  of 
idealists  that  "  sensationalism,"  as  he  insists  on  calling  it,  is 
just  as  ideal  in  the  true  sense,  just  as  dependent  on  true  in- 
ference in  thought,  just  as  far  from  being  bound  to  the  facts 
of  sense,  as  any  metempirics  can  be.  "The  philosopher," 
says  Mr.  Lewes,  "looks  away  from  the  Visible  and  Actual, 
endeavouring  to  form  a  picture  of  the  Invisible  and  Possible. 
He  strives  to  discover  not  what  we  should  see  with  sharpened 
faculties,  but  what  would  be  seen  were  the  constitution  of 
things  different  from  what  it  is.  Philosophy  is  not  an  instru- 
ment like  the  telescope  or  microscope,  intended  only  to 
magnify  the  powers  of  sense,  but  an  organ  of  Imagination, 
by  which  to  reconstruct  an  ideal  world  of  Abstraction." 
Will  not  this  satisfy  even  the  idealists? 

What,  then,  is  the  difference,  if  we  have  here  an  experien- 
tialist  like  Mr.  Lewes  talking  Idealism  —  how  does  this  differ 
from  any  metempiricism  ?  The  answer,  in  a  word,  is  this,  that 
the  one  is  verified  and  constructed  out  of  verified  data,  and 
with  a  view  to  final  verification,  and  the  other  is  not.  "The 
abstractions  and  intuitions  of  science,"  says  Mr.  Lewes, 
"can  always  be  verified;  whereas  the  abstractions  and  in- 
tuitions which  play  a  great  part  in  metaphysics  often  want 
this  basis."  On  the  one  hand,  science  and  scientific,  that 
I 


114 


PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 


is  experiential,  Philosophy  builds  its  abstractions  on  the  real 
elements  of  experience;  on  the  other,  it  is  continually  re- 
solving its  ideal  constructions  into  elements  of  sensible  ex- 
perience. Science  is  in  one  sense  just  as  completely  a  system 
of  Idealism  as  metempirics  itself,  only  its  data  have  been 
first  carefully  verified  by  experience,  and  its  conclusion  are 
being  perpetually  resolved  back  and  verified,  and  always 
are  resolvable  into  and  are  verifiable  by  experience.  In  a 
word,  our  sciences  are  verified  poems. 

This  is  indeed  nothing  else  than  that  subjective  synthesis 
which  would  appear  to  be  Comte's  real  answer  to  the  demands 
of  metaphysical  speculation.  Now,  although  no  one  has  gone 
further  than  Mr.  Lewes  in  vindicating  the  truly  ideal  char- 
acter of  scientific  abstraction  and  the  scientific  construction, 
it  would  appear  rather  from  his  attitude  than  his  actual  argu- 
ment that  he  recognises  a  subjective  synthesis  in  no  such 
sense  as  it  was  used  by  Comte.  Mr.  Lewes  devotes  the  last 
chapter  of  his  book  to  "the  place  of  sentiment  in  philosophy," 
and  by  admitting  it  to  a  place  at  all,  by  all  that  he  says  of  the 
Logic  of  Feeling,  he  has  taken  a  step  of  great  significance. 
But  by  both  of  these  terms  Mr.  Lewes  appears  to  mean 
something  quite  different  from  what  they  mean  in  the  language 
of  Comte.  By  "  logic  of  feeling  "  Comte  meant  the  ordered 
correspondence  between  emotion  and  thought;  by  the^ place 
of  sentiment  in  philosophy,  he  meant  that  our  conceptions 
can  only  be  held  together  and  systematised  by  means  of 
a  harmony  ultimately  satisfying  the  deepest  emotion. 

It  is  in  this  that  will  be  found  the  real  divergence  of  Mr. 
Lewes  from  Comte,  and  not  in  the  various  arguments 
pointed  out  in  his  book.  If  our  entire  scheme  of  thought  is 
only,  as  Mr.  Lewes  has  shown,  a  gradual  approach  towards 
an  ideal  transcript  of  the  external  order,  and  if  over  the  in- 
formation of  that  ideal  transcript  the  emotions  exercise,  as 


PROBLEMS  OF   LIFE  AND   MIND 


115 


yii.  Lewes  shows,  so  powerful  an  influence,  and  if  these 
emotions  are  so  preponderant  and  continuous  in  our  h'ves 
as  they  undoubtedly  are,  it  would  seem  that  a  subjective 
synthesis  of  thought  is  the  only  one  that  can  be  stable  or 
efficient ;  that  is,  our  ideal  construction  in  thought  must 
correspond  not  only  with  the  data  of  experience  without,  but 
with  the  sum  total  and  consensus  of  the  human  organism 
within.  That  human  organism  consists  essentially  of  three 
great  elements  —  feeling,  activity,  intelligence.  Its  unity 
and  its  efficiency  depend  on  the  degree  with  which  all  three 
co-operate  and  strengthen  each  other.  They  co-operate 
under  certain  definite  conditions  partly  arising  from  their 
own  relations  to  each  other  within,  partly  from  the  material 
environment  to  which  they  are  subject,  and  partly  from  the 
social  organism  in  which  and  with  which  they  must  act. 
And  the  relation  in  which  they  work  truly  is  that  summed  up 
by  Comte  in  the  aphorism  — 

Agir  par  affection,  et  penser  pour  agir. 

It  follows,  then,  that  feeling  in  its  highest  and  deepest 
sense  must  form  the  stimulus  and  sanction  of  the  complete 
human  consensus.  That  highest  feeling  has,  as  its  object, 
an  end  strictly  social.  And  thus  a  social  destination  and  a 
social  co-ordination  are  essential  for  the  stability  and  efiiciency 
of  human  conceptions.  That  is  to  say,  the  only  real  phi- 
losophy is  that  which  is  organised  around  a  social  creed  as  its 
basis  and  centre.  Such  we  conceive  to  be  the  subjective 
synthesis  of  Comte ;  and  though  Mr.  Lewes  appears  through- 
out his  work  to  touch  at  points  upon  this  view,  it  does  not 
appear  to  us  that  as  yet  he  makes  it  a  part  of  his  own  system. 

But  the  very  fact  that  he  calls  his  book  "the  foundations 
of  a  creed,"  and  the  spirit  in  which  he  has  approached  this 
and  kindred  problems,  make  his  plan  in  this,  and  the  promised 


Il6  PIIILOSOniY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

volumes,  one  of  singular  interest  to  all  those  who,  from  any 
point  of  view,  await  the  amalgamation  of  Philosophy  with 
Religion.  One  fact  of  no  little  significance  may  be  pointed 
out,  the  difference  that  Mr.  Lewes  draws  in  the  outset  be- 
tween his  view  of  a  creed  and  that  of  Mr.  Spencer.  Mr. 
Lewes  puts  the  Unknowable  entirely  aside,  and  declines  to 
find  any  refuge  from  difficulties  or  any  religious  basis,  by 
invoking  either  the  unknown  or  the  unknowable.  To  leave 
this  open,  we  have  always  felt,  is  to  reopen  the  whole  range 
of  Metaphysics  in  its  worst  or  metempirical  sense,  and  the 
whole  apparatus  of  Theology  will  follow  through  the  breach. 
Surrounded  as  we  are  by  the  unknown  and  the  unknowable, 
they  can  do  us  no  harm  and  waste  no  time,  except  by  our  al- 
lowing them  to  entangle  our  lives  by  our  own  idle  curiosity. 
They  will  die  out  of  the  consciousness  of  mankind,  like  witch- 
craft and  astrology,  not  by  being  disproved  or  reproved,  not 
by  being  either  explained  or  explained  away,  but  by  the  in- 
telligence and  energies  of  men  being  directed  to  more  fruitful 
and  more  ennobling  ends.  The  real  answer  to  Metaphysics, 
if  we  may  trust  the  title-page  of  Mr.  Lewes'  book,  the  real 
solution  of  these  problems  of  Life  and  Mind,  is  to  be  found 
in  the  foundations  of  a  Creed.  And  we  will  close  a  volume 
which  has  satisfied  many  of  our  expectations,  and  awakens 
many  more,  with  the  words  with  which  it  opens  — •  "Deeply 
as  we  may  feel  the  mystery  of  this  universe  and  the  limitations 
of  our  faculties,  the  Foundations  oj  a  Creed  can  only  rest  upon 
the  known  and  the  knowable." 

P.S.  1907.  —  The  attempt  of  Lewes  to  coin  the  new  word 
Metempirics  and  to  substitute  it  for  Metaphysics  has  en- 
tirely fallen  flat.  His  attempt  to  revive  Metaphysics  under  a 
scientific  aspect  has  deservedly  failed,  and  led  to  the  absurd 
mistake  of  assuming  that  he  had  himself  reverted  to  Meta- 


PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND  II7 

physics.  But  the  generation  that  followed  devoted  its  re- 
searches, by  experimental  and  physical  methods,  to  solve  the 
problems  of  Matter,  IMotion,  Force,  and  Origin.  Lewes'  in- 
stinct as  a  physicist  led  him  to  see  that  these  elemental  prob- 
lems were  destined  to  pass  away  from  the  Metaphysical 
Ontologist  into  the  hands  of  the  Chemist,  the  Electrician, 
the  Physicist,  and  the  Biologist. 


VII 

THE   SOCIAL    FACTOR    IN    PSYCHOLOGY 

In  a  very  recent  work  we  read  as  follows:  —  "Who  that 
had  ever  looked  upon  the  pulpy  mass  of  brain-substance, 
and  the  nervous  cords  connecting  it  with  the  organs,  could 
resist  the  shock  of  incredulity  on  hearing  that  all  he  knew  of 
passion,  intellect,  and  will  was  nothing  more  than  molecular 
change  in  this  pulpy  mass  ?  Who  that  had  ever  seen  a  nerve- 
cell,  could  be  patient  on  being  told  that  Thought  was  a 
property  of  such  cells,  as  Gravitation  was  a  property  of 
Matter?" 

This  remark  does  not  sound  like  anything  original.  We 
have  often  heard,  and  we  continually  read  protests  to  the 
like  effect.  I  quote  it,  however,  solely  for  the  connection 
in  which  it  occurs,  and  for  the  author  from  whom  it  comes. 
The  passage  is  not  from  the  writings  of  either  a  theologian 
or  a  spiritualist,  of  a  metaphysician  of  the  intuitional  or 
idealist  school.  It  is  from  the  last  work  of  George  Lewes, 
The  Study  of  Psychology,  1879,  ^.nd  it  is  in  complete  accord 
with  all  that  he  has  written  on  these  questions. 

It  is  certain  that  he  regards  Psychology  as  the  study  of 
material  organisms,  not  as  the  study  of  an  immaterial  sub- 
stance. He  says:  — "In  this  work,  the  science  will  be 
regarded  as  a  branch  of  Biology,  and  its  Method  as  that  which 
is  pursued  in  the  physical  sciences."  He  calls  Psychology 
"the  science  of  the  facts  of  Sentience."  And,  still,  he  uses 
(and  most  consistently  uses)  an  argument  which  is  frequently 

118 


SOCIAL   PSYCHOLOGY  II9 

thought  to  prove  that  the  knowledge  of  the  human  Soul  is 
not  in  pari  materia  with  our  knowledge  of  organic  life,  and 
that  it  must  be  based  on  some  other  foundation. 

What  he  means  is,  that  our  study  of  individual  organic 
life,  though  giving  us  the  basis  and  ground-plan  of  our  study 
of  Psycholog}',  cannot  give  us  all  we  want;  we  need,  as  a 
complement,  the  study  of  social  life.  In  other  words,  the 
knowledge  of  Mind  and  Feeling  cannot  be  complete  without 
the  study  of  Society,  without  History  in  its  widest  sense. 
True  psychology  is,  therefore,  a  very  mixed  kind  of  inquiry. 
It  cannot  be  reduced  to  the  study  of  detached  organs  in 
individual  bodies.  It  embraces  elements  partly  biologic 
and  partly  sociologic;  and  Psychology  cannot  be  limited  to 
Biology,  properly  speaking,  unless  we  give  to  Biology  the 
extravagant  extension  of  meaning  by  which  it  would  include 
History. 

This  insistence  on  a  social  factor  in  Psychology  is  not  new. 
It  was  first  urged,  as  Mr.  Lewes  shows,  by  Auguste  Comte. 
It  has  since,  from  a  different  point  of  view,  been  expounded 
by  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,  and  some  others.  Mr.  Lewes  has 
now  given  it  a  fresh  emphasis.  It  seems  to  me  to  offer  some 
hope  of  a  solution,  that  may  ultimately  close  the  secular 
battle  between  Materialism  and  Spiritualism. 

Shortly  stated,  the  importance  of  the  Social  Factor  in 
Psychology  is  this :  —  Thought  and  Feeling  are  undoubtedly 
functions  of  the  Organism ;  they  can  only  be  treated  rationally 
by  starting  from  the  same  data  and  with  the  same  methods 
that  we  use  in  treating  other  functions  of  organic  life ;  and 
lastly,  mental  state  and  organic  state  are  always  correlative : 
wc  have  no  data  for  detaching  them.  So  far,  we  are  using 
almost  the  language  of  the  older  Materialists.  But  we  now 
know  that  the  rational  study  of  the  Organism,  Man,  is  not 
identical  with  the  special  study  of  the  organs ;  of  all  the  organs, 


120  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

t 

or  of  any  particular  organ.  The  true  study  of  the  human 
organism  —  it  has  long  ago  been  seen  by  all  intelligent  biolo- 
gists— rests  on  the  comparative  study  of  animal  organisation 
generally,  i.e.  on  general  biology ;  and  also  upon  the  relations 
of  animal  and  human  organisation  to  the  external  environ- 
ment in  which  life  is  placed,  and  on  which  life  depends. 

Thus,  whilst  still  holding  on  to  the  central  doctrine  that 
mental  and  moral  phenomena  are  functions  of  the  organism, 
rational  Psychology  passed  out  of  the  crude  platitude  that 
"the  brain  secretes  thought  as  the  liver  secretes  bile,"  and 
it  enlarged  itself  in  several  ways.  First,  whilst  earnest  in  the 
analysis  and  special  study  of  organs,  it  kept  the  Organism,  as 
a  whole,  in  view  as  the  key  of  the  position ;  next,  it  was  vigi- 
lant to  observe  the  relations  with  the  external  environment, 
whether  of  organ  or  of  organism ;  then  it  worked  out  all  the 
consequences  of  the  truth  that  the  human  organism  must  be 
studied  by  the  light  of  animal  organisation  generally.  Finally, 
it  enriched  and  corrected  the  direct  study  of  organisation  by 
the  study  of  the  development  of  organisation,  by  Embryology 
and  Evolution.  This  was,  in  fact,  to  call  in  the  aid  of  the 
History  of  Organisation,  individual  or  general. 

All  this  was  clearly  within  the  province  of  Biology,  strictly 
so  called.  The  whole  of  the  data  and  methods  lay  within 
the  study  of  the  living  Organism.  This,  however,  was  not 
enough.  Biology,  pure  and  simple,  could  not,  under  these 
conditions,  vindicate  its  claim  to  an  exclusive  hearing  on 
Psychology.  Theologians,  metaphysicians,  common  sense, 
and  the  public  instinct  maintained  a  continual  protest,  in 
all  kinds  of  ways,  and  with  every  variety  of  theory.  Amidst 
wild  assumptions  and  self-contradictory  declamation,  what 
they  all  said  in  the  main  came  to  this:  —  "A  science  which 
has  not  one  word  to  say  about  the  profoundest  movements 
that  have  ever  affected  mankind  (and,  ex  hypothesis  Biology 


SOCIAL   PSYCHOLOGY  121 

has  nothing  to  say  about  the  origin  of  Christianity,  the 
Crusades,  the  Reformation,  or  the  French  Revolution) 
cannot  have  an  exclusive  right  to  instruct  us  on  the  mental 
and  moral  phenomena  of  human  nature." 

This  objection  could  not  be  met.  Biology,  indeed,  in  that 
crude  form,  suffered  a  rebuff.  In  vain  it  cried  that  an  en- 
larged knowledge  of  molecular  physics  and  organic  processes, 
a  more  elaborate  analysis  of  cerebral  phenomena,  would 
ultimately  enable  it  to  tabulate  the  conditions  of  the  rise  of 
Christianity.  The  world  only  laughed ;  and  Biology  — 
which  all  the  while  was  right,  as  far  as  it  went  —  grievously 
injured  Science  and  Philosophy,  by  claiming  a  field  larger 
than  it  could  defend  or  control. 

A  most  important  point,  in  truth,  had  been  overlooked. 
It  was  not  enough  to  treat  the  Organism  in  relation  to  the 
external  environment,  and  to  study  the  human  organisation  by 
the  light  of  animal  organisation  generally,  —  to  compare  Man 
with  animals,  to  trace  the  development  of  the  human  organ- 
ism, and  of  the  human  species.  All  this  Biology  had  done,  and 
had  well  done;  but  this  was  not  enough.  It  was  not  suffi- 
ciently remembered  that  Man  was  not  only  an  animal,  but 
an  animal  of  a  unique  kind,  and  that  he  had  functions  and 
faculties  that,  for  the  purpose  in  hand,  were,  practically 
speaking,  not  found  in  other  animals.  Man,  in  fact,  had 
powers  of  mental  and  moral  development,  so  special  to  Man, 
and  of  such  immense  importance  to  his  nature,  that  Man  was, 
literally  speaking,  not  Man  at  all,  unless  regarded  in  connec- 
tion with  his  whole  social  environment.  Just  as  it  was  idle 
to  study  animal  organisation  apart  from  the  inorganic  con- 
ditions of  organisation,  or  to  study  human  organisation  apart 
from  the  biological  conditions  of  animal  organisation  —  and 
these  truths  had  been  long  felt  by  all  rational  biologists  — 
so  at  last  it  came  to  be  seen  that  it  was  equally  idle  to  study 


122  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

the  human  organism  apart  from  the  social  organism.  The 
mental  and  moral  functions  of  the  individual  exist  so  com- 
pletely in  society,  and  are  so  enormously  affected  by  society, 
that  the  study  of  the  facts  of  society,  and  of  the  history  of 
society,  is  the  only  field  where  the  full  bearing  of  mental  and 
moral  functions  can  be  traced. 

The  continuous  and  traditional  life  of  the  human  race,  its 
power  of  growth  and  mental  and  moral  development,  con- 
stitute, in  fact,  the  characteristic  quality  of  the  human  or- 
ganism. The  human  organism  would  not  be  what  we  call 
"Man,"  if  there  had  never  been  on  the  earth  any  such  phe- 
nomenon as  human  society.  Man  would  at  most  be  an  an- 
thropoid brute.  Consequently,  they  were  wrong  who  thought 
they  could  (psychologically)  study  the  human  organism,  as 
an  organism,  apart  from  the  human  society  in  which  and  by 
which  its  psychological  functions  operate.  To  do  this  was 
precisely  the  same  error  as  it  would  be  to  study  the  phenomena 
of  organic  movement  by  inspecting  tissues  no  longer  capable 
of  vital  action,  to  study  the  functions  of  organs  by  inspecting 
the  organs  without  observing  them  in  functional  relation  to 
the  external  world,  to  construct  a  theory  of  respiration  with- 
out any  reference  to  the  chemical  constituents  of  the  atmos- 
phere, or  to  expound  the  function  of  hearing  by  analysing  the 
auditory  organ,  apart  from  the  phenomena  of  external  sound. 

A  rational  Psychology,  therefore,  has  to  supplement  its 
study  of  animal  organisation,  and  of  the  human  organism, 
and  of  the  relations  of  this  organism  to  the  inorganic  world, 
by  a  study  of  the  social  organism,  and  of  the  relations  of  the 
human  organism  to  the  social  world  in  which  alone,  mentally 
and  morally  speaking,  it  lives  and  operates.  That  is  to  say, 
no  study  of  the  organism,  simply  as  such,  can  found  a  complete 
Psychology.  It  must  rest  on  the  double  study,  first,  of  the 
organism  as  such,  then,  of  the  organism  as  a  unit  of  the  social 


SOCL\L   PSYCHOLOGY  1 23 

organism.  But  this  is  equivalent  to  saying  that  Biology, 
in  the  natural  meaning  of  that  term,  cannot  embrace  the 
whole  of  the  elements  of  Psychology.  For  it  would  be  a  vio- 
lent abuse  of  language  to  call  Biology  the  science  of  the  facts 
of  the  social  organism.  This  is  the  province  of  Sociology,  — 
for  linguistic  purists  will  have  to  admit  that  indispensable 
hybrid,  and  not  the  only  hybrid,  in  scientific  nomenclature. 
The  result  of  this  is  that  a  rational  Psychology  can  only  be 
completed  by  the  aid  of  sociologic  reasoning  and  data. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  add  that,  in  extending  the  field 
of  study  of  the  mental  and  moral  phenomena  to  the  study 
of  human  society,  there  is  no  break  with  the  scientific  data 
and  methods  which  form  the  biologic  study  of  the  simple 
organism.  Sociology  is  just  as  much  a  science  as  Biology, 
and  is  equally  rigid  in  its  canons  of  verification,  and  equally 
abhorrent  of  assuming  hypotheses  for  evidence.  There  is 
nothing  new  in  this  demand  for  a  social  element  in  the  study 
of  Mind  and  Feeling,  nor  is  it  in  the  least  idealist  or  spiritual- 
ist. Comte,  Spencer,  Lewes,  and  many  others  have  worked 
it  out  in  different  ways,  and  on  various  lines.  Perhaps 
Lewes,  in  his  last  work,  has  given  special  emphasis  to  it, 
and  his  definition  of  Psychology  appears  to  be  the  most 
complete  we  have.* 

We  often  remark  the  deep  and  burning  feelings  which  these 
problems  of  the  mental  and  moral  nature  of  men  call  out. 
We  all  know  the  storms  of  moral  and  intellectual  indigna- 
tion which  agitate  some  of  the  best  and  wisest  of  men,  when 
they  are  told  that  every  part  of  human  Thought  and  feeling 
must  be  treated,  by  strict  scientific  law,  as  a  state  of  the 
organism,  and  must  be  interpreted  by  the  laws  of  the  organic 

'  "  Psychology  is  the  analysis  and  classification  of  the  sentient  functions 
and  faculties,  revealed  to  observation  and  induction,  completed  by  the  re- 
duction of  them  to  their  conditions  of  existence ,  biological  and  sociological." 


124  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

functions.  "What!"  they  cry,  "is  the  enthusiasm  of  St. 
Paul  and  the  meditation  of  Descartes  to  be  made  clearer  by 
the  study  of  animal  organisation?" 

And  their  indignation  and  their  heat  were  most  just,  so 
long  as  the  laws  of  the  human  organism  were  offered  them  on 
the  narrow  basis  of  simple  Biology.  But  a  larger  basis  is 
now  unfolded.  Men  who  could  not  be  dragged  one  step 
from  the  field  of  scientific  law,  who  held  that  every  mental 
and  moral  fact  was  in  necessary  relation  with  a  physiological 
fact,  still  went  on  to  insist  that  the  laws  of  the  human  or- 
ganism are  bound  up  with,  and  can  only  be  read  by,  the  laws 
of  the  social  organism.  But  this  new  factor  let  in  at  once  the 
direct  study  of  the  whole  range  of  human  emotion,  intelli- 
gence, and  will,  of  all  the  movements,  moral,  affective,  reli- 
gious, imaginative,  that  have  ever  ennobled  mankind;  of 
all  history,  of  the  whole  range  of  tradition,  poetry,  art,  hero- 
ism, and  devotion.  In  a  word,  we  say  that  the  knowledge 
of  Man's  mental  and  moral  nature,  Psychology,  if  it  have  its 
continuous  roots  in  the  analysis  of  nerves  and  brain-matter, 
and  its  body  in  the  science  of  organic  function,  has  its  top  in 
the  record  of  all  that  is  lofty  in  Man's  spiritual  nature. 

We  may  draw  solid  comfort  from  this  teaching.  Our  view 
of  such  a  subject  as  Psychology  will  depend,  of  course,  for 
each  of  us,  upon  the  set  of  his  whole  mental  current,  on  his 
knowledge,  and  partly  on  his  temperament  and  life.  A  man 
will  not  accept  the  theory  of  organic  functions  in  lieu  of  his 
life-long  spiritualism,  simply  because  the  theory  of  organic 
functions  may  have  ceased  to  disgust  him,  to  rank  him  with  the 
brutes  that  perish,  to  force  him  to  abandon  all  the  profound 
spiritual  connotations  of  the  science  of  the  Heart  and  of  the 
Mind.  Yet  withal,  when  we  see  how  profoundly  these  ques- 
tions of  Spirit  and  Matter  in  thought  and  feeling  run  into  the 
summits  of  religion,  and  in  places  less  illuminated  with  the 


SOCIAL   PSYCHOLOGY  12$ 

dry  light  that  ever  burns  amidst  philosophers,  how  often  they 
are  decided  under  the  influence  of  disgust  or  enthusiasm, 
may  we  not  hope  to  behold  more  agreement  and  mutual  ap- 
proach, if  we  can  eliminate  this  element  of  disgust  and  terror  ? 
And  why  should  the  most  devotional  and  spiritual  nature,  the 
most  ideal  and  the  most  sympathetic  of  men,  feel  anything 
of  terror  or  disgust  toward  a  theory  of  human  nature  which 
takes  for  its  data  every  spiritual  and  emotional  fact  in  human 
story  along  with  all  the  other  facts  human,  animal,  or  cosmi- 
cal?  Those  who  rest  Psychology  on  strict  methods  of  ex- 
perience do  not  afiirm  that  the  grey-matter  of  the  brain  thinks 
and  feels ;  we  say  that  the  organism  thinks  and  feels,  and  in 
order  to  understand  the  laws  of  its  thinking  and  feeling,  we  say 
that  you  must  study  (along  with  much  else)  all  that  is  beauti- 
ful and  heroic  in  the  record  of  Humanity.  You  may  not 
adopt  our  theory  of  the  organism ;  but  does  it  disgust  you  or 
terrify  you?  You  may  not  accept  our  interpretation  of  the 
facts;  but  every  one  of  the  facts  of  mental  and  moral  life 
are  as  much  the  data  of  our  interpretation  as  of  yours. 

And  thus  it  comes  about,  as  we  who  view  these  things  from 
the  religious  point  of  view  unceasingly  declare,  that  the 
paramount  and  ever-present  conception  of  Humanity  ex- 
plains, while  it  co-ordinates,  all  science ;  and  that  as  Man 
lives  only  in  Humanity,  so  by  Humanity  alone  can  Man 
understand  himself,  and  the  divisions  of  men  be  hereafter 
reconciled  in  one  Feeling  and  in  one  Faith. 


VIII 

THE    ABSOLUTE 

At  a  Symposium  oj  the  Metaphysical  Society  a  distinguished 
disciple  oj  Hegel  read  a  paper  on  ^'The  Absolute^''  as 
conceived  by  that  school.  It  affirmed  that  the  Ultimate 
Cause,  which  must  be  causa  sui  and  causa  causans,  is  the 
ABSOLUTE,  or  the  Unconditioned,  or  the  Infinite 
Substance,  in  Hegel's  language  —  ^'  the  identity  of  identity 
and  non-identity.''  The  Absolute,  it  continued,  cannot 
be  subject  to  the  conditions  oj  space  and  time,  or  it  would 
not  be  the  Unconditioned:  it  is  Infinite  and  Eternal. 
The  terms  eternal,  selj-existing,  necessary,  are  positive 
definitions  oj  the  Absolute,  and  contain  no  negative  element. 
The  Absolute  affrms  itselj  and  everything  else  that  is. 
To  that  paper  I  read  the  jollowing  reply. 

Since  the  learned  Reader  of  this  paper  admits  that  every- 
thing we  observe  is  assumed  by  us  to  be  the  effect  of  some 
cause,  we  cannot  think  of  a  cause  which  is  not  itself  an  effect, 
having  its  own  cause  beyond  it,  and  so  on  infinitely.  His 
paper  declares  that  we  cannot  think  of  an  infinite  chain  of 
causes  and  effects.  That  may  be ;  but  we  are  just  as  unable 
to  think  of  a  cause  which  is  not  an  effect,  and  has  itself  no 
cause.  An  infinite  chain  of  causes,  and  a  cause  itself  un- 
caused are  equally  unthinkable  by  Man. 

The  Absolute  cannot  be  a  cause  at  all.  A  cause  is  neces- 
sarily related  to  its  effect,  otherwise  it  would  not  be  a  cause. 
By  cause  we  mean  that  which  is  inevitably  followed  by  its 

126 


THE   ABSOLUTE  12/ 

effect.  But  that  which  is  inevitably  followed  by  something 
else,  is  related  to  that  something.  Therefore  it  is  conditioned, 
being  under  the  condition  of  preceding  its  effect.  Conse- 
quently a  Cause  cannot  be  Absolute,  for  it  is  necessarily 
conditioned,  and  Absolute  means  that  which  is  neither  con- 
ditioned nor  related. 

The  Cause  is  not,  and  cannot  be,  the  Effect.  If  the  Cause 
were  the  Effect,  it  would  be  distinguishable  under  two  modes 
of  existence.  But  the  Absolute,  because  it  is  absolute,  can- 
not have  a  dual  existence,  but  can  only  exist  in  one  absolute 
mode. 

Since  the  Cause  is  not  the  Eft"ect,  the  Effect  must  have 
something  which  the  Cause  has  not.  The  Effect  must  be 
something  more  than  the  Cause,  and  yet  something  which 
necessarily  follows  or  accompanies  the  Cause  and  is  involved 
in  the  very  conception  of  Cause.  Therefore  the  Absolute 
cannot  be  a  cause,  nor  The  Cause,  nor  the  First  Cause ;  for 
if  it  were  a  cause,  it  would  necessarily  presuppose  something 
else  as  necessary  as  itself,  which  was  not  itself. 

If  you  contend  that  the  Absolute  is  not  necessarily  the 
Cause,  but  becomes  a  Cause,  then  by  becoming  a  Cause,  it 
ceases  to  be  absolute,  for  the  Absolute  would  be  capable  of 
change  and  of  passing  into  a  new  mode  of  existence. 

If  the  Absolute  becomes  a  Cause,  it  must,  by  that  change 
from  Absolute  existence  into  Causal  existence,  become  either 
more  or  less.  But  the  Absolute  is  held  to  be  Perfect  in  itself, 
Eternal,  Infinite.  Is  the  Absolute  more  the  Absolute  when  it 
becomes  a  Cause,  or  less  the  Absolute?  In  either  case  it 
ceases  to  be  the  Absolute,  for  degree,  or  change,  cannot  be 
predicated  of  the  Absolute.  Degree,  change,  more  or  less, 
imply  conditions  of  existence. 

If  The  Absolute  was  Infinite,  apart  from  its  becoming 
a  Cause,  it  could  not  be  more  infinite  when  it  became  a  cause. 


128  PHILOSOniY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

And  yet  if  something  is  added  in  becoming  a  Cause,  the  In- 
finite would  be  capable  of  extension.  If  nothing  is  added, 
The  Absolute,  apart  from  Cause,  is  absolutely  identical  with 
the  Absolute  become  a  Cause  —  i.e.  the  Cause  equals  o. 

When  the  Absolute  has  become  the  Cause,  it  has  become 
relative,  for  Cause  is  necessarily  related  to  Effect.  But  is  the 
Absolute  capable  of  becoming  the  Relative  ?  If  it  is,  it  is  not 
the  Absolute,  for  it  can  become  that  which  is  not  absolute. 
If  it  be  not  so  capable,  then  there  is  something  which  limits 
the  Absolute.     And  if  it  be  limited,  then  it  is  not  infinite. 

For  the  same  reason,  if  the  Absolute  be  not  capable  of 
becoming  the  Relative,  it  cannot  be  the  Unconditioned,  be- 
cause it  is  under  the  condition  of  never  becoming  the  Rela- 
tive. 

Absolute  in  truth  means  that  which  is  not  relative,  as  Rel- 
ative means  that  which  is  not  absolute,  because  it  is  conceived 
as  having  connection  with  something  else.  Hence,  relative 
is  a  positive,  not  a  negative  conception.  Absolute  is  a  wholly 
negative  conception,  for  it  merely  asserts  the  absence  of  re- 
lation. 

Those  metaphysicians  and  logicians  are  right  who,  with 
Sir  W.  Hamilton  and  Mansel,  maintained  that  absolute  is 
a  negative  conception.  And  the  attempt  to  give  a  positive 
meaning  to  absolute  is  the  source  of  endless  confusion.    " 

The  learned  Reader  has  cited  the  unfortunate  argument 
of  Herbert  Spencer  in  his  First  Principles  to  show  some  pos- 
itive existence  in  the  Absolute.  ''To  say  that  we  cannot 
know  the  Absolute  is,  by  implication,  to  affirm  that  there  is 
an  Absolute."  It  is  strange  that  this  eminent  philosopher 
should  countenance  so  shallow  a  mystification.  Why 
positive?  What  existence?  Why  the  Absolute?  Examine 
this  dictum. 

He  argues  —  "When  we  say  we  cannot  know  the  Absolute, 


THE  ABSOLUTE 


129 


we  affirm  that  there  is  an  Absolute."  By  parity  of  reasoning, 
when  we  say  we  cannot  know  Non-Existence,  we  affirm  that 
there  is  Non-Existence.  This  may  be  Hegelism,  but  it  is 
a  contradiction  in  words.  When  we  say  we  cannot  know  the 
Sea-serpent,  do  we  affirm  that  the  Sea-serpent  exists?  When 
we  say  we  cannot  know  Abracadabra,  do  we  affirm  that 
Abracadabra  exists  ? 

What  is  the  meaning  of  The  Absolute?  Absolute  is  an 
adjective  simply  denoting  absence  of  relations,  just  as  empty 
denotes  absence  of  contents.  Why  The  Absolute  any  more 
than  The  Empty?  The  Equal?  The  Red?  The  Un- 
meaning? 

jSIetaphysicians  have  debated  about  the  relative  and  the 
absolute,  using  capital  letters  and  putting  the  definite  article 
before  adjectives  till  they  have  come  to  persuade  themselves 
that  words  of  mere  description  denote  actual  Things.  And 
then  they  aflirm  that,  having  turned  an  adjective  into  a  sub- 
stantive by  using  the  capital  letter  and  the  definite  article, 
they  have  proved  the  existence  of  the  adjective. 

The  Relative  is  an  unmeaning  phrase  just  as  The  Absolute 
is;  and  rational  Philosophy  has  suffered  from  the  unhappy 
error  of  Herbert  Spencer  in  recognising  any  such  verbal 
windbag.  It  has  led  to  the  deification  of  the  Unknowable  as 
a  sort  of  First  Cause  and  Author  of  the  Universe.  The 
Relative  is  just  as  unknowable  as  The  Absolute,  or  The  Red, 
or  The  Equal,  or  The  Unmeaning.  It  would  be  as  wise  to 
fall  prostrate  in  admiration  of  The  Unmeaning  as  to  con- 
centrate religion  on  the  absolute  Unknowable. 

We  are  told  that  we  cannot  conceive  the  relative  unless  at 
the  same  time  we  conceive  the  absolute.  We  might  just  as 
well  argue  that  we  cannot  conceive  a  man  as  having  a  mother, 
unless  we  also  conceive  him  as  having  no  mother  at  all. 
We  can  and  do  conceive  ever)-  man  as  under  an  endless  scries 

K 


I  7,0  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

of  different  relations  —  and  we  take  these  as  positive  facts. 
But,  unless  for  purposes  of  logic  or  abstract  science,  we 
never  conceive  any  man  as  entirely  bare  of  any  relations  of 
any  kind. 

Ten  thousand  intelligent  men  and  women,  hour  by  hour, 
conceive  beings  and  things  around  them  in  all  conceivable 
relations,  and  they  cannot  think  of  them  at  all  except  in 
some  one  or  other  of  these  relations.  They  do  not,  and 
cannot,  think  of  them  in  an  absolute  way.  Logicians,  gram- 
marians, and  philosophers,  after  long  mental  training,  do  their 
best  to  fix  their  attention  on  some  thing  or  being,  after  elimi- 
nating the  relations  in  which  the  thing  or  being  is  inevitably 
surrounded.  But  this  mental  feat  is  not  an  innate  necessity 
of  the  human  mind.  The  ten  thousand  men  and  women  of 
the  world  are  right,  even  philosophically,  and  the  one  phi- 
losopher meditating  on  absolute  existence  is  merely  perform- 
ing a  dialectical  hypothesis. 

When  the  philosopher  erects  into  a  law  of  thought  the 
dialectical  hypothesis,  of  which  only  one  mind  in  a  million 
is  capable,  and  out  of  this  logical  artifice  constructs  a  Self- 
Existing  Entity,  he  is  misled  by  his  own  meditations,  and  is 
falsifying  human  nature. 

I  interrogate  my  own  consciousness :  and  I  cannot  find 
any  conception  of  The  Relative,  or  The  Absolute,  or  of  The 
Unknowable.  I  can  discover  no  trace  whatever  in  my  own 
consciousness  of  a  positive  Something  behind  the  Relative, 
or  of  any  transcendental  Unknowable  behind  phenomena. 
I  find  thousands  of  things  unknown,  and  I  have  every 
reason  to  think  most  of  them  will  remain  unknown.  But 
what  The  Unknown,  or  the  Unknowable,  may  be  I  know  not ; 
and  I  believe  them  both  to  be  unmeaning  phrases  —  as  one 
might  say  The  Red,  or  The  Indefinite,  or  The  Ignorant  — 
if  they  are  meant  to  denote  Entities,  or  even  abstract  Ideas. 


THE   ABSOLUTE 


131 


Nor  do  I  find  in  my  own  consciousness  any  sense  of  being 
confronted  with  a  Real  behind  all  phenomena  as  a  positive 
Entity.  I  find  a  consciousness  that  there  may  be  a  Real; 
and  I  cannot  even  exclude  the  very  unlikely  possibility  that 
the  phenomena  may  be  the  Real  after  all,  or  that  Phenomena 
and  Real  may  both  be  phases  of  my  own  consciousness. 
No  one  of  these  three  possible  solutions  can  be  either  proved 
—  or  disproved.  And  nothing  rational  would  turn  on  any 
one  —  if  proved  or  disproved.  In  any  case,  the  Real,  the 
Absolute,  the  Unknowable  do  not  force  themselves  upon  my 
consciousness  as  objective  Existences,  or  even  as  intelligible 
problems  of  thought. 

I  well  know  the  answer  to  all  this  —  an  answer  to  which 
Herbert  Spencer  inconsistently  gave  some  countenance. 
They  say  —  "All  this  is  simply  the  common  sense  view  of  the 
'man  in  the  street.'  This  is  the  mere  practical  reason  of  the 
ordinary  Philistine."  "No  doubt  in  Logic,  that  is  intel- 
lectually and  in  definite  reasoning,"  they  add,  "there  can  be 
no  consciousness  of  The  Absolute,  but  there  is  an  indefinite, 
undefinable,  subliminal  consciousness,  which  is  wholly  in- 
dependent of  Logic,  or  strict  reasoning;  scintillations  of 
thought,  quite  superior  to  any  reasoning;  there  is  a  'sort  of 
a  something'  which  makes  us  conscious  'in  a  kind  of  way' 
of  a  transcendental  Absolute,  Real,  Unknowable.  This 
universal  consciousness  is  not  amenable  to  Time  or  Space 
or  Reason  or  Logic.  It  works  in  its  own  non-terrestrial, 
empyrean  way,  and  mocks  at  Time,  Space,  Reason,  and 
Logic." 

So  far  the  Metaphysicians  ever  since  Hegel.  And  after 
examining  all  they  say,  I  afiirm  that  the  man-in-the-strcct, 
the  Philistine,  has  the  substance,  and  the  metaphysician 
grasps  at  the  shadow  —  the  shadow  of  his  own  brain  cast 
on  the  clouds  of  Non-Entity.     If  philosophy  means  that, 


132  PHILOSOPHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

after  the  strictest  processes  of  logical  reasoning,  this  tran- 
scendentalism is  to  sweep  away  all  rational  conclusions  and 
reveal  alogical  dogmas  of  its  o\  n,  philosophy  would  descend 
to  the  level  of  vulgar  faith-healing  or  the  credulity  of  a  Nea- 
politan peasant  who  believes  in  St.  Januarius. 

All  talk  about  a  "universal  consciousness,"  about  "a 
primordial  synthesis  of  consciousness-in-general,  having 
three  elements,  of  which  particular  consciousness  is  only  one," 
about  "consciousness-in-general  being  identical  and  also 
non-identical  with  Reality  in  the  Universe"  —  this  is  mere 
verbiage.  And  the  man  of  "ordinary  common  sense" 
is  not  only  justified  in  practically  turning  from  it  as  waste 
of  mental  activity,  but  he  is  philosophically  right  in  telling 
the  metaphysician  that  he  is  juggling  with  words  —  and  is 
not  using  his  brain  like  a  sane  man. 

The  learned  Hegelian  of  the  paper  writes  :  "The  Absolute 
afifirms  itself,  and  at  the  same  time  everything  else  that  is." 
I  proceed  to  examine  this  proposition. 

If  the  Absolute  affirms  the  existence  of  something  which  is 
not  itself,  it  cannot  be  infinite,  for  it  would  be  limited  by 
things  which  are  not  itself. 

If  the  Absolute  is  "everything  else,"  what  is  the  thing 
which  it  affirms  but  which  is  "not  itself"? 

If  the  Absolute  is  "the  infinite  substance,"  how  can  it 
affirm  "everything  else  that  is"?  Infinite  substance  must 
contain  everything  that  is,  or  it  would  not  be  infinite.  But 
if  it  contains  everything  else  it  would  not  be  absolute,  for  it 
would  contain  an  infinite  variety  of  things. 

The  learned  reader  adopts  Spinoza's  dictum  "that  the 
Infinite  Substance  is  a  res  cogitans,'^  and  also  Hegel's  dictum 
"that  the  Absolute  must  be  conceived  as  a  Subject,  because 
the  Absolute  thinks  the  universal  ideas  which  form  the  ulti- 
mate bond  of  coherence   of  the   Universe."     Whether  he 


THE   ABSOLUTE  1 33 

rightly  interprets  Hegel  in  attributing  Personality  to  The 
Absolute  is  doubtful;  but  he  does  so  attribute  Personality 
himself.  v 

I  proceed  to  examine  these  views.  The  "coherence  of 
the  Universe"  implies  a  bond  between  diverse  materials, 
and  the  Absolute  thinks  the  thoughts  which  are  the  bond  that 
causes  these  materials  to  cohere.  But  if  so,  The  Absolute 
must  cause,  i.e.  create,  the  materials,  and  also  be  itself  the 
"bond."  That  is  to  say,  The  Absolute  is  at  once  the  sub- 
stance and  the  form  of  everything  that  is.  In  that  case, 
The  Absolute  would  be  cognisable  under  two  distinct  aspects, 
that  of  substance  and  of  form.  But  these  aspects  are  con- 
trasted and,  if  so,  related  necessarily  to  each  other.  Con- 
sequently, The  Absolute  would  have  a  dual  existence  and 
not  an  absolute  existence. 

Again,  The  Absolute  would  be  both  res  cogitans  and  also 
res  cogitata.  Thought,  humanly  speaking,  implies  both 
Subject  and  Object  —  an  Ego  and  a  Non-Ego.  Can  The 
Absolute  have  any  Non-Ego  ?  Can  it  think  without  a  N071- 
Ego?  If  it  can,  it  must  be  "everything"  itself,  and  then  it 
cannot  be  the  cause  of  everything  else. 

If  The  Absolute  is  conscious  of  a  Non-Ego,  it  is  conscious 
of  something  which  is  not  itself,  and  which  limits  it,  and  then 
it  cannot  be  infinite.  If  The  Absolute  is  not  conscious  of  a 
Non-Ego,  it  is  conscious  of  being  the  Universal  Subject, 
without  an  Object.  That  means  that  it  is  conscious  of  being 
everything,  and  its  thoughts  must  correspond  with  truth. 
But  the  paper  admits  that  "to  know  is  to  distinguish."  If 
The  Absolute  is  "everything,"  everything  is  absolute.  And 
thought  is  impossible,  where  nothing  remains  to  distinguish. 

Again,  if  The  Absolute  is  a  Subject,  it  has  a  consciousness 
of  Personality,  for,  "humanly  speaking,"  we  cannot  conceive 
that  which  thinks  thoughts  able  to  act  as  bonds,  as  being 


134  nilLOSOPHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

devoid  of  Personality.  But  we  cannot  conceive  Personality, 
unless  we  conceive  it  as  conscious  of  something  not  itself, 
with  which  it  is  contrasted  or  related.  That  is  to  say,  the 
idea  of  Personality  excludes  the  idea  of  The  Absolute.  And 
that  seems  finally  to  have  been  the  conclusion  of  Hegel. 

Metaphysicians  seek  to  escape  from  these  dilemmas  — 
which  they  call  "mere  common  sense"  —  by  distinguishing 
between  actual  and  potential  existence  —  or  the  "actualised 
consciousness"  and  "the  potential  consciousness-in-general." 
They  say  The  Absolute  is  not  necessarily  a  Cause,  does  not 
necessarily  think,  is  not  necessarily  a  Subject,  not  a  Person. 
But  it  has  the  potentiality  of  becoming  all  these.  QucL 
absolute,  it  is  absolute.  All  consciousness,  we  are  told,  in- 
cludes actual  concrete  consciousness  and  potential  conscious- 
ness-in-general. 

But  when  The  Absolute  does  anything,  becomes  anything, 
acts  as  "the  bond  of  coherence,"  or  "thinks,"  or  "causes" 
anything,  or  becomes  at  once  Universal  Subject  and  Uni- 
versal Object,  the  idea  of  change  is  involved,  and  a  new  mode 
of  existence.  That  is  to  say,  it  ceases  to  be  absolute  and 
becomes  The  Relative. 

But  The  Absolute  is  already  Perfect  and  Infinite,  apart 
from  ceasing,  thinking,  or  becoming.  And,  in  passing  from 
actual  to  potential  consciousness,  it  would  derogate  from  its 
nature  of  Absolute.  The  "potential"  side  of  the  Absolute 
would  only  be  a  mode  of  eliminating  the  idea  with  which  we 
set  out. 

If  The  Absolute  were  the  greater,  or  the  better,  or  more 
the  infinite,  or  more  absolute,  or  in  any  respect  more  devel- 
oped when  it  assumes  its  "potential"  powers  than  when  the 
potentiality  lay  dormant  —  then  the  Absolute  would  not  be 
Perfect  when  they  were  dormant.  If  it  were  less  great,  less 
absolute,  in  any  respect  different  when  it  passes  into  energy, 


THE   ABSOLUTE  1 35 

The  Absolute  would  be  relative.  If  actual  and  potential 
existence  involve  no  difference,  then  the  dilemma  remains 
unsolved. 

A  learned  Prelate  suggests  that  The  Absolute  must  not  be 
taken  with  too  strict  logical  precision.  It  may  be  a  First 
Cause,  in  the  sense  that  it  was  not  what  we  commonly  mean 
by  a  Cause,  but  a  transcendental,  super-logical  Cause.  It 
has  no  necessary  relations :  but  it  may  be  capable  of  develop- 
ing some  quasi-relations.  Surely  all  this  comes  to  saying, 
in  the  familiar  spirit  of  Anglican  compromise,  that  The 
Absolute  is  not  quite  absolute,  that  it  is  a  modified  Absolute, 
adapted  to  our  human  understanding. 

Now,  if  there  be  any  one  thing  which  is  bound  to  be  abso- 
lutely the  thing  it  claims  to  be  —  it  is  The  Absolute.  The 
Absolute  by  its  nature  excludes  any  degree,  compromise, 
approximation,  or  qualification.  Conceive  an  Absolute 
secundum  quid !  —  an  Absolute  which  is  absolute  "  in  a  sense  " 
—  which  has  the  nature  of  the  absolute !  This  may  be 
theology,  but  it  is  not  Philosophy.  An  Absolute  which 
"afhrms  itself  and  everything  else  that  is"  cannot  cry  for 
mercy  on  the  ground  that  it  is  not  a  real  Absolute,  but  a 
modified  Absolute,  "a  sort  of  an"  Absolute:  —  not  a  real 
lion,  but  only  a  metaphysical  hide. 

And  the  only  answer  to  all  this  is:  "Your  objections  may 
be  sound  Logic,  'humanly  speaking' ;  but  we  are  not  arguing 
logically,  but  only  metaphysically.  The  Absolute  has  no 
relation  to  Time,  and  nothing  can  be  predicated  of  it  in  the 
human  terms  of  Time,  or  Space,  or  Change.  It  is  supersen- 
suous,  super-logical,  and  perceptible  only  in  the  unity  of  the 
synthesis  of  identity  with  non-identity." 

The  common  sense  of  sensible  men  is  after  all  the  true 
Philosophy  in  the  matter.  We  can  neither  know  nor  con- 
jecture anything  rational  about  The  Absolute,  or  the  Un- 


136  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON  SENSE 

conditioned,  or  Consciousness-in-general.  The  ideas  they 
denote,  the  very  phrases,  are  unmeaning,  cobwebs  spun  in- 
dustriously out  of  infinite  subtleties  and  nonentities  —  which 
rest  upon  nothing,  and  can  lead  to  nothing. 


IX 

THE    BASIS    OF    MORALS 
A  Symposium  at  the  Metaphysical  Society 

Though  I  do  not  presume  to  interpose  in  the  principal 
combat  waged  by  the  learned  Professor  W.  K.  Clifford  and 
P.  C.  W.,  I  take  the  opportunity  afforded  me  of  saying  a  few 
words  upon  the  paper  of  the  latter,  which  propounds,  I 
think,  a  new  and  dangerous  claim.  The  argument  of  P.  C. 
W.,  and  it  is  his  central  position  in  the  discussion,  amounts 
to  this :  there  can  be  no  morality  but  one  which  is  based  on 
the  design  of  the  Creator  of  man.  He  insists  that  no  one  has 
any  right  to  use  the  words  "good"  or  "bad"  of  man,  "unless 
we  suppose  him  to  have  had  a  maker  and  to  be  made  with 
a  design."  But  this  is  to  push  the  thcor}^  of  final  causes 
further  than  it  has  yet  been  carried,  and  to  make  morality 
the  simple  servant  of  theology. 

Merely  to  suppose  that  the  man  has  a  maker,  and  was  made 
with  a  design,  would  be  to  very  little  purpose,  unless  we  knew 
•what  the  design  was,  and  how  the  design  is  to  be  carried  out 
by  the  thing  or  being  made.  A  savage,  for  instance  (and 
moral  problems  must  open,  as  do  games  of  chess  with  a 
pawn,  by  advancing  the  convenient  savage),  —  the  savage 
finds  a  watch.  How  decide  if  it  be  a  good  watch?  If 
the  savage  is  a  disciple  of  Dr.  W.  Paley,  he  will  rightly 
argue  that  the  watch  had  a  maker,  and  this  maker  a 
design.  But  before  he  can  say  if  it  be  a  "good"  or  a 
"bad"  watch,  he  must  be   instructed  in  its  purpose  and 

137 


138  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

uses,  or  he  will  know  no  more  about  it  than  if  he  took  it  to 
be  a  curious  stone. 

In  the  same  way,  to  apply  P.  C.  W.'s  argument,  before 
we  can  pronounce  the  man  to  be  "good"  or  "bad,"  we  must 
know  not  only  that  the  man  had  a  creator,  and  the  creator  a 
design,  but  we  must  know  precisely  what  the  design  is,  and 
some  one  in  the  maker's  confidence  must  instruct  us  how 
his  work  is  to  be  used.  Otherwise,  simply  to  suppose  that 
the  maker  of  man  had  a  design,  is  only  to  say  that  every  man 
can  form  any  opinion  he  pleases. 

What  precisely  is  the  design  on  which  man  was  created, 
and  how  he  may  rightly  work  out  that  design,  is  the  very 
question  about  which  all  theologies  and  all  religions,  and  cer- 
tainly, not  the  least,  all  Christian  theologians  most  vehe- 
mently contend.  Thus,  to  tell  us  that  there  can  be  no  mo- 
rality but  one  based  on  the  design  of  creation,  is  to  adjourn 
any  chance  of  agreement  in  morality,  and  even  the  com- 
mencement of  moral  truth,  until  Theology  has  settled  all  its 
controversies,  and  Revelation  has  disposed  of  every  criticism. 
Our  sense  of  right  and  wrong,  conduct  and  precept,  would 
become  corollaries  of  Divinity;  they  must  wait  the  issue  at 
stake  between  Professor  Lightfoot  and  the  author  of  Super- 
natural Religion. 

If  the  Bible  be  an  authentic  and  genuine  revelation,^  we 
have  indeed  that  precise  and  direct  account  of  the  design  with 
which  Man  was  made.  But  until  this  distinct  revelation  of 
the  Creator's  design  is  established  beyond  dispute,  and  for 
all  who  do  not  accept  it  literally  and  completely,  every  man 
will  conceive  the  design  according  to  his  temper  and  habits. 
To  the  cannibal,  the  final  cause  of  Man  will  be  to  eat  his 
neighbour  joyfully,  until  he  be  himself  eaten  peacefully. 
The  red-skin  will  insist  that  Man  was  created  to  take  and 
furnish   scalps,    the    Dahomian    to    celebrate   and    support 


THE  BASIS   OF  MORALS  1 39 

"grand  customs,"  and  the  Nubian  to  fill  slave-markets. 
As  of  old,  it  will  be  always,  quot  homines,  tot  Dei;  and  the 
designs  of  these  creators  will  be  differently  conceived  by  each 
tribe.  A  late  ex-Chancellor  was  once  heard  to  say,  after  a 
visit  to  the  Zoological  Gardens,  that  so  great  a  multiplicity 
of  created  beings  forcibly  impressed  him  with  the  conviction 
of  a  similar  multiplicity  of  creators.  So,  if  we  put  aside 
a  full  and  direct  Revelation  of  the  design,  the  past  and  present 
races  of  the  world  have  given  so  many  different  answers  to 
the  question  —  what  is  the  purpose  of  Man?  that  it  is  plain 
mankind  have  attributed  to  the  supposed  creator  an  infinite 
diversity  of  designs,  if  they  have  not  conceived  an  infinite 
variety  of  designers. 

What  is  called  Natural  Theology,  and  even  that  which 
may  be  called  the  substratum  of  all  theologies,  are  really 
of  no  use  for  the  purpose  of  deciding  if  a  man  or  an  action  be 
"good"  or  "bad."  Vague  assumptions  that  there  is  a 
Creator,  that  his  purpose  was  benevolent,  that  Man  has  rela- 
tions to  things,  beings,  or  a  being  outside  of  himself  —  all 
these  fall  short  of  what  is  required.  They  will  not  enable  us 
to  build  up  any  morality,  much  less  to  solve  such  questions 
of  casuistry  as  the  State  support  of  incurable  paupers  —  the 
problem  we  started  out  to  solve.  A  basis  oj  morals  must 
determine  the  entire  current  of  moral  teaching;  and  it  must 
be,  like  the  axioms  of  geometr}^  universal,  precise,  and  in- 
disputable. If  all  morality  is  to  depend  on  the  question, 
—  how  far  does  it  conform  to  the  design  with  which  Man  was 
created  ?  —  we  must  have  that  design  ever  before  us,  defined 
in  all  its  breadth  and  its  precision.  This  we  can  only  get  from 
a  specific  revelation.  Natural  Theology  and  the  light  of 
Nature  give  the  most  opposite  conclusions.  If  we  do  not 
mean,  by  the  argument  from  the  design  of  the  Creator,  the 
precise  rules  of  life  laid  down  in  the  Bible  or  by  the  Church, 


140  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

we  really  mean  that  every  man  is  to  call  that  "good"  which 
is  right  in  his  own  eyes ;  and  accordingly  the  moral  scheme  of 
P.  C.  W.  would  not  differ  from  that  of  any  heathen  moralist, 
for  the  "design,"  and  the  "Creator,"  would  be  used  by  each 
reasoner  as  a  dialectic  hypothesis,  to  be  modified  at  will. 

It  is  surely  a  dangerous  ground  to  take  up,  thus  to  insist 
that  there  can  be  no  "basis  of  morals"  apart  from  theology, 
for  this  means,  as  we  have  seen,  apart  from  some  specific 
presentation  by  revelation;   and  if  there  can  be  no  basis  of 
morals,  there  can  be  no  coherent  morality,  and  if  so,  no 
settled  sense  of  right  and  wrong,  virtue  and  conduct,  except 
such  as  comes   haphazard,  or  by  momentary  impulse.     Of 
all  the  systems  affecting  the  practical  problems  of  life,  the 
moral  code  is  perhaps  the  one  on  which  there  is  the  greatest 
agreement,  and  theology  the  one  on  which  there  is  the  least. 
And  to  insist  that  we  cannot  decide  if  any  action  be  "good" 
or  "bad,"  until  we  have  a  knowledge  of  the  designs  of  the 
Creator  —  nay,  that  we  may  not  use  the  very  terms  "good" 
and  "bad,"  is  to  reverse  the  order  in  which  Man  has  pro- 
ceeded, and  to  expose  human  conduct  to  prolonged  uncer- 
tainty.     It  has  always  been  seen  that   morality  preceded 
theology,  and  was  earlier  fixed  and  accepted ;   the  design  of 
Providence  was  a  deduction,  in  fact,  from  what  men  thought 
right,  and  God  was  an  impersonation  of  their  ideas  of  "good." 
It  will  be  a  perilous  change  to  tell  men  that  they  must  call 
nothing  "good"  or  "bad,"  until  the  contending  Churches 
have  finally  settled  on  some  one  way,  in  which  "to  justify 
the  ways  of  God  to  Man."    When  Churches  tell  the  world  that 
men  may  not  apply  moral  epithets  to  human  actions,  save 
in  language  of  some  theological  scheme,  men  are  very  likely 
to  grow  indifferent  to  moral  judgment  altogether,  without 
advancing  any  nearer  to  the  particular  theological  scheme. 

My  purpose  is  simply  to  draw  attention  to  the  new,  as  I 


THE   BASIS   OF   MORALS 


141 


think,  and  alarming  doctrine,  that  no  man  may  use  the  terms 
"good"  or  "bad,"  except  in  so  far  as  he  claims  a  knowledge 
of  the  design  of  a  Creator ;  and  I  shall  therefore  abstain  from 
comment  on  one  or  two  matters  in  the  same  ingenious  paper, 
in  which  I  think  metaphors  may  be  found  disguised  in  the 
uniform  of  arguments.  But  it  is  worthy  of  notice  that  the 
mode  in  which  the  condition  A  is  stated  virtually  excludes  the 
obvious  answer.  It  is  assumed  "that  there  is  nothing  super- 
natural in  either  [  ?  any]  of  us  —  i.e.  nothing  in  which  our 
nature  essentially  differs  from  that  of  any  other  known  animal 
—  our  differences  from  other  animals  being  purely  anatomi- 
cal," etc.,  etc.  Here  the  sentence  introduced  by  i.e.  is  cer- 
tainly not  the  equivalent  of  the  former.  Those  who  decline 
to  assert  any  knowledge  of  anything  supernatural  in  Man  are 
far  from  asserting  that  there  is  nothing  in  which  our  nature 
essentially  differs  from  that  of  any  other  known  animal. 
It  is  difficult  to  see  how  the  one  proposition  can  be  assumed 
for  the  other ;  nay,  it  is  difficult  to  see  any  connection  between 
the  two  propositions.  All  orders  of  reasoners,  however  much 
they  disclaim  belief  in  the  supernatural,  would  agree  in  ac- 
knowledging many  things  in  which  men  essentially  differ 
from  brutes,  and  many  differences  not  at  all  anatomical. 

The  differences  which  separate  men  from  brutes  are  in- 
finite capacities  of  intellectual,  moral,  and  practical  life  — 
powers  of  developing  thought,  religion,  sentiment,  art,  and 
industr}%  which  other  animals  have  not.  It  may  fairly  be 
said  that  they  who  disclaim  any  supernatural  superiority 
for  man  are  they  who  best  sec,  and  who  set  most  store  by, 
Man's  natural  superiority  to  the  brutes,  and  who  least  think 
of  these  differences  as  anatomical  rather  than  as  social,  moral, 
and  spiritual.  To  tell  those  who  disclaim  any  knowledge 
of  the  supernatural  that  they  regard  Man  as  a  mere  brute, 
is  an  ancient  reproach,  but  a  novel  argument.     It  has  been 


142  PHILOSOrHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

used  by  the  controversialists  of  many  religions,  but  it  does  not 
often  appear  now  in  philosophical  discussion.  To  the  devotee 
of  Brahminism,  they  who  deny  his  doctrines  degrade  Man 
to  the  level  of  the  brute.  And  the  Fuegian  whom  the  mis- 
sionary implored  not  to  kill  and  eat  his  decrepit  mother 
replied  that,  unless  he  did  so,  he  should  sink  to  the  level  of 

the  dogs. 

The  truth  is,  that  the  attempt  to  limit  the  basis  of  morals 
to  the  design  of  creation  is  entirely  needless.  All  the  pur- 
poses it  serves  are  easily  fulfilled  by  a  simpler  condition. 
Very  many  schools  of  moralists  will  be  ready  to  admit  that 
the  true  basis  of  morals  may  be  found  in  the  end  which  most 
befits  human  nature.  If  we  find  Man,  as  a  fact,  best  adapted 
to  live  in  a  certain  way,  we  can  take  that  as  a  test  of  how  Man 
should  live,  without  dogmatising  about  the  design  of  creation. 
For  the  purpose  of  supplying  a  basis  of  morals,  it  comes  to 
precisely  the  same  thing,  whether  we  say  that  human  nature 
is  adapted  to  a  certain  life,  or  that  it  was  designed  by  a  par- 
ticular maker  to  follow  that  life.  The  correspondence  be- 
tween Man's  capacities  and  a  given  moral  life  is  just  as  com- 
plete in  one  case  as  in  the  other ;  and  to  encumber  this  fact 
with  controversies  as  to  its  origin,  is  to  raise  needless  diffi- 
culties. One  class  of  reasoners  believe  that  natural  develop- 
ment has  slowly  adapted  Man  to  the  particular  life ;  another 
insist  that  Man  was  created  wdth  this  particular  design ;  and 
a  third  are  content  to  believe  that  he  is  so  adapted  as  a  fact, 
and  they  decline  to  set  up  any  specific  doctrine  of  creation, 
or  any  formal  theory  of  evolution.  All  three  schools  will 
perfectly  agree  that,  as  a  fact,  it  is  better  for  Man  to  live  in  the 
same  way,  and  they  have,  in  fact,  the  same  basis  of  morals. 
Nothing,  therefore,  can  be  more  entirely  gratuitous,  or  more 
certainly  dangerous,  than  to  convert  a  plain  question  of  Moral 
Philosophy  into  a  subordinate  doctrine  of  Theology. 


THE  BASIS   OF   MORALS  1 43 

What,  if  we  are  to  give  labels,  we  may  call  the  functional 
basis  of  morals,  will  really  satisfy  all  conditions,  and  it  prac- 
tically embraces  almost  all  theories.  Human  nature,  when 
investigated,  proves  to  be  of  a  certain  kind,  and  capable  of 
certain  works.  It  has  tried  all  kinds  of  lives,  but  the  sort 
of  life  at  which  it  is  best  to  aim  is  that  where  its  nature  is 
most  harmoniously  developed,  where  there  is  the  least  waste 
of  power  by  conflict,  and  the  greatest  sustained  result.  Ages, 
races,  and  individuals  may  differ,  more  or  less,  as  to  what  life 
exactly  fills  these  conditions,  but  all  will  agree  (it  is  the  basis, 
and  almost  all  the  result  of  ancient  philosophy)  that  the  object 
of  Man  ought  to  be  to  develop  his  nature  most  completely. 

That  is  to  say,  the  basis  of  morals  is  to  be  found  by  deter- 
mining the  function  of  human  nature.  What  in  the  fore- 
going discussion  are  called  the  Mechanical  and  the  Perfection- 
ist bases  of  morals,  are  only  modes  of  explaining  how  this 
function  of  human  nature  came  into  existence,  a  question 
with  which  I  am  in  no  way  concerned.  The  function,  i.e. 
the  proper  action  of  the  human  organism,  is  a  thing  to  be 
determined  by  observation  and  reflection,  and  can  be  deter- 
mined, and  has  been  determined,  by  very  various  methods 
of  reasoning  in  verv'  much  the  same  way.  There  is  little 
more  to  be  said,  since  x^ristotle  showed,  at  the  outset  of  phi- 
losophy, that  the  good  of  Man  and  the  happiness  of  Man  may 
be  used  interchangeably,  and  both  follow  from  observing 
and  determining  the  proper  work  of  Man. 

The  ultimate  consequences  of  finding  the  grounds  of  duty 
by  observing  the  capabilities  of  human  nature  are,  accord- 
ingly, almost  exactly  the  same  as  those  of  finding  them  in  the 
supposed  designs  of  a  Creator.  Both  say  :  —  This  is  right, 
because  Man  is  adapted  to  this.  The  latter  theory  only  adds 
the  gratuitous  and  unprovable  assertion  that  Man  has  been 
adapted  to  it  by  a  Being  who  created  him  with  that  design. 


144  PHILOSOPHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

And  whilst  nothing  is  gained  to  morality  by  this  further  ex- 
planation, everything  is  risked,  by  the  mind  being  constantly 
invited  to  leave  the  ground  of  rational  observation  for  that 
of  arbitrary  hypothesis.  He  who  bases  duty  on  observed 
capacities  of  mankind  has  every  advantage  possessed  by  him 
who  bases  it  on  the  design  of  creation.  He  will,  moreover, 
be  kept  in  the  sphere  of  reality ;  whilst  the  Duty  of  the  other 
will  be  merely  his  own  imaginations.  The  doctrine  of 
function  is  intelligible  science ;  that  of  design  is  mere  theos- 
ophy.  The  designs  of  the  Creator  being  limited  only  by  the 
powers  of  fancy  of  the  theorist,  the  theorist  has  to  endow  him- 
self with  a  real  power  of  omniscience,  and  to  rehearse  crea- 
tion itself  in  his  imagination,  every  time  that  he  attempts 
to  solve  a  moral  problem.  It  is  a  curious  example  of  this, 
that  in  the  case  of  the  cancerous  pauper  discussed  by 
P.  C.  W.,  it  is  impossible  to  solve  the  problem  on  the  theory 
of  design,  without  first  deciding  the  somewhat  formidable 
question,  what  is  the  design  of  cancer? 

As  I  should  approach  the  problem  itself  on  a  moral  basis 
almost  identical  with  that  of  P.  C.  W.,  theological  substratum 
apart,  it  is  not  singular  if  I  come  to  almost  identical  conclu- 
sions. I  should  look  with  equal  horror  both  upon  desertion 
and  assassination  as  modes  of  treating  incurable  paupers, 
and  I  should  look  on  relief  and  charity  as  equally  a  sabred 
duty.  I  should  do  so  because  I  find  the  rule.  To  Love  one 
another,  written  in  Man's  nature ;  because  every  man,  by  the 
laws  of  social  existence,  is  the  neighbour  of  every  other  man, 
and  because  the  succour  of  the  helpless  is  the  plainest  of 
social  duties.  Society  would  be  convulsed  unless  mercy, 
tenderness,  compassion,  and  self-sacrifice  were  impressed 
upon  it  daily  and  hourly  by  system,  unless  every  violation 
of  the  duty  to  practise  these  virtues  were  visited  by  the  public 
horror  of  brutality. 


THE   BASIS   OF  MORALS  I45 

Ever}'  virtue  and  even-  grace  which  private  or  public  life 
has  ever  displayed  under  the  teaching  of  any  religion  can  be 
really  shown  to  be  the  following  out  of  Man's  true  nature; 
and,  indeed,  they  have  never  had  any  other  source  or  in- 
spiration. The  plain  dictates  of  duty,  and  the  ground  of 
obligation  for  morality,  may  equally  be  found  in  watching 
human  nature  in  all  its  varieties  and  the  vast  history  of  its 
development ;  and  they  stand  on  a  footing  far  surer  than  our 
hesitating  interpretation  of  what  we  call  Revelation,  or  the 
vague  hypotheses  of  Natural  Theology.  The  Religion  of 
Fictions  may  rest  assured  that  a  Religion  of  Science,  in  what- 
ever form  presented,  will  be  lacking  neither  in  the  graces, 
consolations,  nor  sanctions  of  a  religion.  In  its  own  way, 
it  will  have  its  Revelation,  its  Future,  its  External  Power, 
and  its  common  Brotherhood ;  and  each  of  these  will  be  all 
the  more  real  and  the  more  sustaining  in  that  they  will  be 
natural,  and  not  supernatural. 

And  all  this,  to  me,  describes  the  moral  characteristics, 
not  of  the  Christian,  but  of  the  religious  temper.  With  what 
has  been  so  finely  said  in  preceding  discourses  by  Dr.  Mar- 
tineau,  we  ought,  I  think,  most  cordially  to  join.  Only  for 
the  words  "Theology"  and  "Christian"  we  must  put  the 
wider  and  more  ancient  terms  "Religion"  and  "Human"; 
and  again,  for  the  intrinsic  consciousness  and  emotional  in- 
tuitions, whereby  these  are  said  to  prove  themselves,  we  must 
substitute  the  reasonable  proof  of  science,  philosophy,  and 
positive  psychology. 

We  have  had  before  us  three  distinctive  views  as  to  the 
relations  of  Religion  and  Morality.  Each  of  the  three  has 
pressed  on  us  a  very  powerful  thought.  The  reconciliation 
is  obscure,  yet  I  hold  on  to  the  hope  that  it  may  one  day  be 
found ;  that  we  shall  have  to  surrender  neither  Religion  nor 
Science,  neither  demonstration  on  the  one  hand,  nor  Dogma, 


146  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

Worship,  and  Discipline  on  the  other ;  that  we  shall  end  by- 
accepting  a  purely  human  base  for  our  Morality,  and  withal 
come  to  sec  our  JNIorality  transfigured  into  a  true  Religion. 

It  is  the  purport  of  the  first  of  the  arguments  before  us  to 
establish  :  that  morality  has  a  basis  of  its  own  quite  indepen- 
dent of  all  theology  whatever,  but  that  since  morality  must 
be  deeply  affected  by  any  theology,  the  morality  will  be  under- 
mined if  based  on  a  theology  which  is  not  true.  We  must 
all  agree,  I  think,  to  that. 

The  second  argument  insists  that  if  the  religious  founda- 
tions and  sanctions  of  morality  be  given  up,  human  life  runs 
the  risk  of  sinking  into  depravity,  since  morality  without 
religion  is  insufficient  for  general  civilisation.  For  my  part 
I  entirely  assent  to  that. 

The  third  argument  rejoins  that  Theology  cannot  supply 
a  base  for  morals  that  have  lost  their  own ;  but  that  morals, 
though  they  have  their  own  base,  and  are  second  to  nothing, 
are  not  adequate  to  direct  human  life  until  they  be  transfused 
into  that  sense  of  resignation,  adoration,  and  communion 
with  an  overruling  Providence,  which  is  the  true  mark  of 
Religion.     I  assent  entirely  to  that. 

We,  W'ho  follow  the  teaching  of  Comte,  humbly  look  for- 
ward to  an  ultimate  solution  of  all  such  difficulties  by  the 
force  of  one  common  principle :  that  we  acknowledge  a 
religion,  of  which  the  creed  shall  be  science ;  of  which  the 
Faith,  Hope,  Charity,  shall  be  real,  not  transcendental, 
earthly,  not  heavenly  —  a  religion,  in  a  word,  which  is  en- 
tirely human,  in  its  evidences,  in  its  purposes,  in  its  sanctions 
and  appeals.  Write  the  word  "Religion"  where  we  find 
the  word  "Theology,"  write  the  word  "Human"  where  we 
find  the  word  "Christian,"  or  the  words  "Theist,"  "Mus- 
sulman," or  "Buddhist,"  and  these  discussions  grow  prac- 
tical and  easily  reconciled  ;    the  aspirations  and  sanctions  of 


THE   BASIS   OF   MORALS  1 47 

Religion  burst  open  to  us  anew  in  greater  intensity,  without 
calling  on  us  to  surrender  one  claim  of  reality  and  humanity ; 
the  realm  of  Faith  and  Adoration  becomes  again  conterminous 
with  Life,  without  disturbing,  nay,  whilst  sanctifying,  the 
invincible  resolve  of  modern  men  to  live  m  this  world,  for 
this  world,  with  their  fellow-men. 

And  this  brings  us  to  the  source  of  all  difficulties  about  the 
relations  of  Morality  and  Religion.     We  place  our  morality 

—  we  are  compelled  by  the  conditions  of  all  our  positive 
knowledge  to  place  it  —  in  a  strictly  human  world.  But 
it  is  the  mark  of  every  theology  (the  name  of  Theology  as- 
sumes it)  to  place  our  religion  in  a  non-human  world.  And 
thus  our  human  system  of  morals  may  possibly  be  distorted 

—  it  cannot  be  supported  —  by  a  non-human  religion.  But, 
on  the  other  hand,  it  is  dwarfed  and  atrophied  for  want  of 
being  duly  expanded  into  a  truly  human  religion.  Our 
morality  with  its  human  realities,  our  theology  with  its  non- 
human  hypotheses,  will  not  amalgamate.  Their  methods 
are  in  conflict.  In  their  base,  in  their  logic,  in  their  aim,  they 
are  heterogeneous.  They  do  not  lie  in  pari  materid.  Give 
us  a  religion  as  truly  human,  as  really  scientific,  as  is  our 
moral  system,  and  all  is  harmony. 

Our  morals,  based  as  they  must  be  on  our  knowledge  of 
Life  and  of  Society,  are  then  ordered  and  inspired  by  a  reli- 
gion which  belongs,  just  as  truly  as  our  moral  science  does, 
to  the  world  of  science  and  of  Man.  And  then  religion  will  be 
no  longer  that  quicksand  of  Possibility  which  two  thousand 
years  of  debate  have  still  left  it  to  so  many  of  us.  It  becomes 
at  last  the  issue  of  our  knowledge,  the  meaning  of  our  science, 
the  soul  of  our  morality,  the  ideal  of  our  imagination,  the 
fulfilment  of  our  aspirations,  the  lawgiver,  in  short,  of  our 
whole  lives.  Can  it  ever  be  this  whilst  we  still  pursue  Re- 
ligion into  the  bubble  world  of  the  Whence  and  the  Whither? 


148  PHILOSOPHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

That  morality  is  dependent  on  theology;  that  morality 
is  independent  of  religion :  each  of  these  views  presents  in- 
superable difficulties,  and  brings  us  to  an  alternative  from 
which  we  recoil.  To  assert  that  there  is  no  morality  but 
what  is  based  on  Theology  is  to  assert  what  experience,  his- 
tory, and  philosophy  flatly  contradict,  nay  that  which  revolts 
the  conscience  and  all  manly  purpose  within  us.  History 
teaches  us  that  some  of  the  best  types  of  morality,  in  men  and 
in  races,  have  been  found  apart  from  anything  that  Christians 
can  call  theology  at  all.  Morality  has  been  advancing  for 
centuries  in  modern  Europe,  whilst  theology,  at  least  in 
authority,  has  been  visibly  declining. 

The  morality  of  Confucius  and  of  Sakya  Mouni,  of  Socrates 
and  Marcus  Aurelius,  of  Vauvenargues,  Turgot,  Condorcet, 
Hume,  was  entirely  independent  of  any  theology.  The  moral 
system  of  Aristotle  was  framed  without  any  view  to  theology, 
as  completely  as  that  of  Comte  or  of  our  recent  moralists. 
We  have  experience  of  men  with  the  loftiest  ideal  of  life  and 
of  strict  fidelity  to  their  ideal,  who  expressly  repudiate  the- 
ology, and  of  many  more  whom  theology  never  touched. 
Lastly,  there  is  a  spirit  within  us  which  will  not  believe  that 
to  know  and  to  do  the  right,  we  must  wait  until  the  mysteries 
of  existence  and  the  universe  are  resolved,  its  origin,  its  gov- 
ernment, and  its  future.  To  make  right  conduct  a  corollary 
of  a  theological  creed,  is  not  only  contrary  to  fact,  but  shock- 
ing to  our  self-respect.  We  know  that  the  just  spirit  can  find 
the  right  path,  even  whilst  the  judgment  hangs  bew^ildered 
amidst  the  Churches. 

To  hold,  as  would  seem  to  require  of  us  the  second  argu- 
ment, that,  though  theology  is  necessary  as  a  base  for  mo- 
rality, yet  almost  any  theology  will  suffice  —  Polytheist, 
Mussulman,  or  Deist  —  so  long  as  some  imaginary  being  is 
postulated,  this  is  indeed  to  reduce  theology  to  a  minimum; 


THE   BASIS   OF   MORALS  1 49 

since,  in  this  case,  it  does  not  seem  to  matter  in  which  God 
you  may  believe.  To  say  that  morality  is  dependent  on  one 
particular  theology,  is  to  deny  that  men  are  moral  outside 
your  peculiar  orthodoxy;  to  say  th?t  morality  is  dependent 
merely  on  some  form  of  theology,  is  to  say  that  it  matters 
little  to  practical  virtue  which  of  a  hundred  creeds  you  may 
profess.  And  when  we  shrink  from  the  arrogance  of  the  first 
and  the  looseness  of  the  second  position,  we  have  no  alterna- 
tive but  to  admit  that  our  morality  must  have  a  human,  and 
not  a  superhuman,  base. 

It  does  not  follow  that  morality  can  suffice  for  life  without 
religion.  Morality,  if  we  mean  by  that  the  science  of  duty, 
after  all  can  supply  us  only  with  a  knowledge  of  what  we 
should  do.  Of  itself  it  can  neither  touch  the  imagination, 
nor  satisfy  the  thirst  of  knowledge,  nor  order  the  emotions. 
It  tells  us  of  human  duty,  but  nothing  of  the  world  without 
us ;  it  prescribes  to  us  our  duties,  but  it  does  not  kindle  the 
feelings  which  are  the  impulse  to  duty.  Morality  has  nothing 
to  tell  us  of  a  paramount  Power  outside  of  us,  to  struggle 
with  which  is  confusion  and  annihilation,  to  work  with  which 
is  happiness  and  strength ;  it  has  nothing  to  teach  us  of  a 
communion  with  a  great  Goodness,  nor  does  it  touch  the 
chords  of  Veneration,  Sympathy,  and  Love  within  us. 
Morality  does  not  profess  to  organise  our  knowledge  and  give 
symmetry  to  life.  It  does  not  deal  with  Beauty,  Affection, 
Adoration. 

If  it  order  conduct,  it  does  not  correlate  this  conduct  with 
the  sum  of  our  knowledge,  or  with  the  ideals  of  our  imagina- 
tion, or  with  the  deepest  of  our  emotions.  To  do  all  this  is 
the  part  of  Religion,  not  of  morality;  and  inasmuch  as  the 
sphere  of  this  function  is  both  wider  and  higher,  so  does 
Religion  transcend  Morality.  Morality  has  to  do  with  con- 
duct, Religion  with  life.     The  first  is  the  code  of  a  part  of 


I50  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

human  nature,  the  second  gives  its  harmony  to  the  whole 
of  human  nature.  And  morality  can  no  more  suffice  for 
life  than  a  just  character  would  suffice  for  any  one  of  us  with- 
out intellect,  imagination,  or  affection,  and  the  power  of 
fusing  all  these  into  the  unity  of  a  man. 

The  lesson,  I  think,  is  twofold.  On  the  one  hand,  morality 
is  independent  of  theology,  is  superior  to  it,  is  growing  whilst 
theology  is  declining,  is  steadfast  whilst  theology  is  shifting, 
unites  men  whilst  theology  separates  them,  and  does  its 
work  when  theology  disappears.  There  is  something  like  a 
civilised  morality,  a  standard  of  morality,  a  convergence 
about  morality.  There  is  no  civilised  theology,  no  standard 
of  theology,  no  convergence  about  it.  On  the  other  hand, 
morality  will  never  suffice  for  life ;  and  every  attempt  to  base 
our  existence  on  morality  alone,  or  to  crown  our  existence 
with  morality  alone,  must  certainly  fail.  For  this  is  to  fling 
away  the  most  powerful  motives  of  human  nature.  To 
reach  these  is  the  privilege  of  Religion  alone.  And  those 
who  trust  that  the  Future  can  ever  be  built  upon  science  and 
civilisation,  without  religion,  are  attempting  to  build  a 
Pyramid  of  bricks  without  straw.  The  solution,  we  believe, 
is  a  non-theological  religion. 

There  are  some  who  amuse  themselves  by  repeating  that 
this  is  a  contradiction  in  terms,  that  religion  implies  theology. 
Yet  no  one  refuses  the  name  of  religion  to  the  systems  of 
Confucius  and  Buddha,  though  neither  has  a  trace  of  theol- 
ogy. But  disputes  about  a  name  are  idle.  If  they  could 
debar  us  from  the  name  of  Religion,  no  one  could  disinherit 
us  of  the  thing.  We  mean  by  religion  a  scheme  which  shall 
explain  to  us  the  relations  of  the  faculties  of  the  human  soul 
within,  of  man  to  his  fellow-men  beside  him,  to  the  world 
and  its  order  around  him;  next,  that  which  brings  him  face 
to  face  with  a  Power  to  which  he  must  bow,  with  a  Providence 


THE  BASIS   OF  MORALS  I5I 

which  he  must  love  and  serve,  virith  a  Being  which  he  must 
adore  —  that  which,  in  fine,  gives  man  a  doctrine  to  believe, 
a  discipline  to  live  by,  and  an  object  to  worship.  This  is 
the  ancient  meaning  of  Religion,  and  the  fact  of  religion  all 
over  the  world  in  every  age.  What  is  new  in  our  scheme  is 
merely  that  we  avoid  such  terms  as  Infinite,  Absolute,  Im- 
material, and  vague  negatives  altogether,  resolutely  con- 
fining ourselves  to  the  sphere  of  what  can  be  shown  by  ex- 
perience, of  what  is  relative  and  not  absolute,  and  wholly  and 
frankly  human. 


X 

THE    ETHICAL    CONFERENCE 

A  Conjerence  of  Ethical  Societies,  European  and  American, 
was  to  meet  at  Chicago  during  the  month  oj  September. 
Dr.  Felix  Adler,  oj  New  York,  having  invited  Mr. 
Frederic  Harrison  to  attend,  as  representing  the  Positivist 
m-ovement,  or  if  miable  to  attend  to  communicate  a  paper, 
the  following  address  was  sent  to  be  submitted  to  the 
Conference. 

It  is  a  matter  of  regret  that  the  Positivists  of  Newton  Hall 
find  themselves  unable  to  take  personal  part  in  the  Confer- 
ence of  Ethical  Societies.  Primarily  and  essentially,  this 
body  claims  to  be  an  Ethical  Society ;  for  it  seeks  to  promote 
the  development  of  moral  life  on  a  strict  basis  of  positive 
sociology  and  scientific  ethics.  It  would  therefore  find  itself 
in  complete  accord  with  all  serious  efforts  to  place  the  true 
culture  of  self  and  of  the  community  on  rational  and  human 
grounds. 

Whatever  differences  of  view  might  arise  between  a  Posi- 
tivist and  an  Ethical  movement  would  be  found  —  not  in  the 
common  ground,  which  would  extend  over  the  entire  pro- 
gramme of  an  Ethical  Association  —  but  in  the  further  aim 
of  the  Positivist  movement  to  add  to  ethical  culture  Phi- 
losophy and  Religion.  It  would  serve  little  purpose  to  en- 
large on  the  ground  which  is  common  to  both  Positive  and 
Ethical   movements.     It   will  be  more  useful  to  state  the 

grounds  which,  in  the  former  point  of  view,  make  the  ulti- 

152 


THE  ETHICAL   CONFERENCE  I53 

mate  extension  of  the  ethical  cukure  to  Philosophy  and  Reli- 
gion not  only  legitimate  but  indispensable.  Right  conduct 
is  the  true  end  of  a  worthy  human  life.  But  our  conduct  is 
ultimately  determined  —  not  by  what  we  are  taught  to  do, 
or  by  what  we  should  like  to  do  — but  by  what  we  believe 
and  what  we  revere. 

In  using  the  word  Religion,  we  are  not  giving  it  any  theo- 
logical significance,  nor  are  we  limiting  it  to  any  special 
form  of  belief.  The  Chinese  and  the  Negroes  (not  to  mention 
many  other  races)  have  a  formal  religion  which  is  entirely 
without  God ;  and  in  all  schemes  of  belief  which  can  be 
called  religion  there  is  a  common  element.  That  common 
element  is  (i)  a  belie}  in  some  Power  recognised  as  greater 
than  the  individual  or  even  than  the  community,  as  able  to 
deal  out  good  and  evil,  and  as  interested  in  the  acts  of  the 
individual  and  the  community,  (2)  a  sense  of  reverence,  awe, 
love,  and  gratitude  towards  such  a  Power,  and  some  mode 
of  making  that  sense  manifest,  and  (3)  certain  practices, 
or  course  of  conduct,  or  rules  of  life,  which  are  believed  to 
be  welcome  to  that  Power,  and  such  as  will  procure  its  favour. 

It  is  not  proposed  to  argue  for  any  particular  type  of  creed, 
worship,  or  practice.  The  argument  of  this  paper  is  simply 
that  ethical  conduct  is  powerfully  affected  for  good  or  for 
evil  by  the  type  of  creed,  worship,  and  discipline  current  in 
the  society,  or  ruling  the  conscience  of  the  individual.  It 
follows  that  ethical  culture,  carried  to  whatever  perfection, 
cannot  secure  any  given  course  of  conduct ;  for  a  dominant 
religious  belief  may  supersede  and  control  the  ethical  sense, 
unless  in  a  society  where  Religion  is  inoperative  or  atrophied. 

It  is  true  that,  for  considerable  groups  and  masses  on  both 
sides  of  the  Atlantic,  religion  seems  to  have  reached  this  in- 
operative stage,  and  acute  persons  are  found  to  regard  this  as 
its  final  form.     But  the  teaching  of  history  is  against  this 


154  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

view ;  for  it  shows  us  Man  over  incalculable  periods  of  time, 
and  under  a  thousand  varying  conditions,  always  powerfully 
stirred  and  modified  by  religion  in  one  of  its  many  types. 
And  even  in  societies  such  as  the  working-class  of  Berlin  or 
Paris,  where  it  may  seem  that  all  sense  of  Religion  is  atrophied, 
it  is  difficult  to  maintain  that  the  practical  results  of  the  re- 
ligious habits  of  centuries  do  not  still  mould  conduct. 

In  order  to  prove  that  Religion  will  not  continue  to  in- 
fluence conduct  in  the  future,  it  would  be  necessary  to  show 
that  a  tendency  to  recognise  some  dominant  Power,  and 
to  feel  strong  emotions  about  such  a  Power,  and  to  act 
under  the  control  of  that  belief  and  those  emotions,  was  not 
an  innate  habit  of  human  nature.  But  philosophy  proves 
no  such  thing ;  no  philosopher  of  repute  has  even  attempted 
such  proof ;  and  the  best  modern  psychology  of  every  school 
concurs  in  scientific  analysis  of  those  qualities  of  brain  and 
heart  which  make  up  the  compound  religious  instinct.  Phi- 
losophers in  turn  expose  the  inadequacy  of  certain  forms  of 
religion ;  but  they  are  constantly  making  more  definite  and 
positive  the  common  element  of  religion,  and  its  roots  in 
Man's  moral  and  mental  structure  which  the  various  forms 
of  religion  are  designed  to  satisfy. 

The  same  may,  indeed,  be  said  of  Philosophy,  understand- 
ing by  the  word  Philosophy  the  sum  of  our  knowledge  of 
Nature  and  Man.  So  long  as  our  philosophy  was  limited  to 
physics,  and  the  analogies  of  natural  with  moral  and  social 
science  were  not  understood,  it  might  be  supposed  that  ethi- 
cal conduct  was  not  controlled  by  our  interpretation  of  the 
phenomena  of  Nature,  at  least  for  societies  which  had  passed 
beyond  the  African,  Hindoo,  and  Chinese  types  of  civilisa- 
tion. But  now  that  Philosophy  has  brought  Nature  and 
Man  into  line,  and  shows  us  in  both  correlative  laws,  and 
finds  a  similar  evolution  in  societies  and  in  ethics,  it  is  im- 


THE  ETHICAL  CONFERENCE  I  55 

possible  to  doubt  that  moral  conduct  is  ultimately  controlled 
by  the  general  ideas  we  hold  about  the  laws  of  Man's  moral 
and  social  life. 

The  masses,  it  is  true,  are  not  aware  that  they  have  any 
philosophy,  and  it  would  be  vain  to  talk  to  them  about  moral 
and  social  laws.  But,  just  as  they  can  speak  intelligibly 
without  knowing  rules  of  grammar  or  even  the  names  of  parts 
of  speech,  so  they  have  dominant  habits  of  mind  which  affect 
their  daily  lives.  Men,  however  ignorant,  act  differently  ac- 
cording as  they  hold  or  deny  that  their  acts  have  some  re- 
lation to  a  superior  Will.  And  a  practical  result  is  at  once 
visible  when  men  become  accustomed  to  regard  events  and 
acts  —  not  as  decreed  or  inspired  by  arbitrary  wills  —  but 
as  the  intelligible  consequences  of  scientific  law.  See  how 
different  is  the  attitude  in  an  outburst  of  cholera  of  the  people 
of  Berlin,  Paris,  or  New  York  to  that  of  the  fatalist  pilgrim 
to  Mecca  and  Benares  ! 

The  result  is  that  Religion  and  Philosophy  so  powerfully 
affect  conduct,  that  no  ethical  culture  can  determine  con- 
duct, unless  by  an  alliance  with  Religion  and  Philosophy:  — 
Religion  meaning  deep  feeling  about  a  Power  believed  to  be 
supreme  or  superior,  and  Philosophy  meaning  general  ideas 
about  the  order  of  Nature  and  the  evolution  of  Man.  At  the 
very  basis  of  ethical  culture,  at  its  threshold  and  on  its  crown, 
stands  the  problem  of  the  relation  of  the  individual  to  the 
society,  and  the  crucial  problem,  how  to  harmonise  the  claims 
of  the  individual  and  of  the  social  ideal.  No  one  can  doubt 
that  both  Religion  and  Philosophy  have  very  much  to  say 
on  this  crucial  problem,  and  that  the  whole  ethical  solution 
may  be  recast,  whatever  ethical  training  there  may  have  been, 
say,  under  an  overmastering  religious  enthusiasm  such  as  that 
preached  by  Buddha  or  St.  Francis.  Or  suppose  a  dogmatic 
scheme  of  individualism  based  on  a  general  physical  and 


156  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

social  philosophy  such  as  that  which  animated  the  rigid  Po- 
litical Economy  of  the  last  generation,  and  which  sprang 
from  the  self-interest  doctrines  of  Bentham. 

The  difficulties  which  encompass  all  human  efforts  after 
right  conduct  amidst  the  spasmodic  forces  of  appetite  and 
interest  are  enormous;  and  civilisation,  which  on  the  one 
hand  strengthens  the  resources  of  moral  culture,  on  the  other 
hand  opens  new  and  subtle  modes  in  which  appetite  and 
interest  can  find  gratification.  Morality,  however  pure  and 
elevated,  must  always  remain  a  somewhat  tepid  and  prosaic 
stimulus  when  contrasted  with  the  whirlwind  of  passion  and 
the  subtle  phthisis  of  self-interest.  It  is  certain  that  Man's 
benevolent  instincts  never  reach  the  red  heat  of  lust  and  hate. 

History  shows  us  one  force,  and  one  only,  which  has  ever 
successfully  contended  with  these  appetites  and  conquered 
the  promptings  of  self.  That  force  is  Religion,  in  some  form. 
It  may  be  in  a  bad  form  —  Moloch-worship ;  Obeism ;  the 
devotion  to  Tribe,  City,  Church,  Sect,  or  Prophet.  But 
the  passionate  submission  of  self  to  some  dominant  Power 
or  Idea,  to  whom  life  itself  is  owed,  has  in  all  ages  proved 
strong  enough  to  overmaster  the  stings  of  appetite  and  even 
the  instinct  of  escaping  pain  or  death.  The  white  heat  of 
religious  enthusiasm  has  proved  stronger  than  the  red  heat  of 
selfish  desire.  And  nothing  else  in  the  history  of  mankind 
has  done  that.  Civilisation,  so  far  as  it  is  limited  to  mere 
ethical  culture,  may  somewhat  diminish  violence,  though  it 
makes  murder  even  more  diabolically  deliberate ;  but  on  the 
other  hand  it  is  the  soil  in  which  fraud  grows  like  a  deadly 
fungus. 

It  is  quite  true  that  Religion  has  only  done  this  imperfectly 
and  unsteadily,  acting  only  in  certain  ages  and  societies, 
or  on  given  persons,  and  in  special  spheres  of  human  life. 
And  it  is  true  that  Religion  in  the  most  advanced  societies 


THE   ETHICAL   CONFERENCE  I  57 

of  the  Old  and  the  New  World  seems  to  have  lost  its  savour, 
like  the  salt  in  the  Testament  parable.  Else,  what  would 
be  the  meaning  of  an  ethical  movement  outside  and  inde- 
pendent of  the  Gospel?  But  the  true  explanation  is  that 
the  salt  has  lost  its  savour,  because  its  whole  intellectual  basis 
is  honeycombed,  because  it  has  got  into  a  hopeless  conflict 
with  science,  and  because  philosophy  has  proved  that  even 
its  ethical  standard  is  crude  and  misleading.  That  is  the 
point  from  which  we  set  out  —  viz.  that  ethical  culture, 
religion,  and  philosophy  are  really  so  much  interdependent 
and  so  organically  correlated  that  it  is  only  possible  to  treat 
them  as  separate  for  temporary  and  special  purposes.  They 
are  not  independent  institutions  which  can  be  applied  to  the 
conduct  of  life  without  reference  to  each  other.  We  can  no 
more  isolate  any  one,  except  for  study,  analysis,  and  com- 
parison, than  we  can  cure  an  ailing  human  body  by  exclusive 
treatment  of  the  digestive,  nervous,  or  vascular  system,  treat- 
ing any  one  of  these  as  being  practically  independent  of  the 
other  two.  AMiat  is  needed  is  a  synthesis  of  human  life  — 
not  an  analvtic  ethical  culture. 

On  these  grounds  we  who  meet  in  Newton  Hall  believe 
that  any  permanent  movement  for  ethical  culture  must  be  at 
the  same  time  a  movement  for  religious  and  philosophical 
culture  jointly.  Indeed,  the  religious  and  the  philosophical 
problems  are  really  antecedent  —  must  come  first.  These 
problems  are  truly  the  basis :  they  govern  and  determine  the 
ethical  problem.  Conduct  is  the  result  of  the  Ideal  that  we 
revere,  plus  the  Truth  which  we  know  to  be  supreme.  When 
we  have  settled  on  the  Ideal  as  an  object  of  love  and  devotion 
—  when  we  have  recognised  the  limit  of  human  knowledge  — 
then  we  may  build  up  our  ethical  culture  in  accordance  with 
our  religious  emotions  and  our  philosophical  beliefs.  As  we 
said  at  the  beginning,  neither  religion  nor  philosophy  can, 


15S  niiLosoniv  of  common  sense 

in  our  view,  transcend  this  planet,  human  nature  and  human 
life  as  found  thereon,  and  the  sphere  of  demonstrable  science. 
\Vc  will  admit  nothing  super-human  in  Religion,  and  nothing 
supra-scientitic  in  Philosophy.  We  find  both,  here  on  earth 
and  in  the  domain  of  verifiable  knowledge.  Nothing  has 
been  said  in  this  communication  about  Positivism  as  a  system, 
Auguste  Comte  as  a  teacher,  or  Humanity  as  an  object  of 
reverence.  We  have  argued  the  question  on  general  grounds. 
But  it  will  be  understood  that  we  find  the  base  of  ethical 
culture  in  the  practical  service  of  Humanity  by  the  light  of  the 
general  doctrines  of  Positive  Philosophy. 


XI 

NATUR.\L   THEOLOGY 

SrmciENT  attention  has  not  yet  been  given  to  a  very 
acute,  ven-  learned,  and  eminently  judicial  estimate  of  Natural 
Theology  by  the  light  of  modem  science,  the  last,  and,  alas ! 
the  posthumous  work  of  the  late  Mr.  W.  M.  W.  Call.^  As 
so  much  of  Mr.  Call's  work  was  given  to  the  Westminster 
Review  now  more  than  fortv  vears  a^o,  and  to  other  unsigned 
organs  of  free  inquiry,  the  general  public  which  reads  so  little 
philosophy  was  not  aware  how  much  learning,  acuteness, 
and  truthfulness  of  nature  was  covered  under  the  modest 
and  simple  life  of  one  who  had  become  a  clergyman  in  the 
Church  some  sixty  years  ago,  and,  after  a  long  and  painful 
struggle  of  years,  had  withdrawn  for  conscience'  sake  from 
a  position  which  he  felt  to  be  morally  and  intellectually 
unbearable. 

This  little  volume  opens  with  a  pathetic  and  most  gracefully 
written  chapter  from  the  unpublished  autobiography  of  the 
author.  It  is  the  stor\-  of  a  deeply  religious  mind,  fascinated 
by  the  Bible  in  childhood,  roused  in  boyhood  by  B}Ton  and 
Shelley,  hdf  inspired  by  Coleridge  and  latitudinarian  the- 
olog}-,  and  ultimately  finding  a  temporar}'  rest  in  the  ministr}- 
of  the  Church  of  England.  Then  follows  a  deeply  interesting 
and  candid  unveiling  of  the  torments  of  spirit  through  which 
many  an  acute  and  conscientious  mind  in  the  orthodox  fold 
must  have  passed  in  the  last  generation  when  hell,  inspira- 

'  FiruiJ  Causes  —  a  Refutation.  By  Wathen  Mark  Wilks  Call,  M.A. 
Kegan  Pad,  Trench,  and  Co.     i7Tao,  1891. 

IS9 


l60  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

tion  and  authenticity  of  the  Bible,  and  the  supernatural 
machinery  of  Christianity  began  to  fade  away  like  bad  dreams. 
The  simple,  truthful,  modest  story  of  all  that  it  cost  a  con- 
scientious priest  to  retire  from  his  profession  and  to  devote 
his  life  to  the  patient  but  obscure  pursuit  of  honest  and  labo- 
rious study,  makes  an  impressive  introduction  to  a  learned 
investigation  of  the   scientific  grounds  of  natural   theology. 

When  first  relieved  from  the  bonds  of  an  absolute  ortho- 
doxy, Mr.  Call  found  himself  in  the  shifting  phases  of  the 
vague  Theisms  of  the  schools  of  Bentham,  Hegel,  Mazzini, 
or  Mill.  But  the  systematic  study  of  physical  science,  into 
which  he  threw  himself,  and  an  absorbing  interest  in  the 
philosophy  of  evolution,  gradually  taught  him  the  hollow- 
ness  of  the  foundations  of  theology,  apart  from  revelation. 
And  impressed  with  all  the  waste  of  thought,  the  shallow 
inconsequence,  and  the  moral  confusion  involved  in  the 
Theistic  hypothesis,  he  prepared  this  book  with  great  deliber- 
ation and  research.  And  he  brings  us  to  the  conclusion 
wherein  he  at  last  found  rest:  "The  sole  sacred  ideal  that 
remains  to  us  is  that  of  humanity;  not  of  the  human  race 
indiscriminately,  but  of  the  purer,  nobler  constituents  of  it, 
the  great  collective  existence,  'whichever  lives  and  ever  learns,' 
the  mystical  association  of  all  intellects,  of  all  loves,  of  all 
forces,  the  object  of  all  our  efforts,  the  sovereign  to  vdiom 
we  are  all  responsible.  .  .  .  These  sentiments,  this  en- 
thusiasm, this  devotedness,  form,  as  Mr.  Mill  acknowledges, 
a  real  religion"  (p.  159). 

Mr.  Call  begins  by  examining  the  great  argument,  which 
runs  through  so  many  forms  of  Natural  Theology,  that  the 
order  and  harmony  discoverable  in  the  world  force  us  to  at- 
tribute to  it  a  divine  origin.  But  where  does  this  argument 
rest,  when  we  have  once  grasped  in  all  its  fulness  the  idea 
of  the  relativity  of  knowledge  ?     We  can  only  know  this  order 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  l6l 

and  harmony  in  terms  of  the  human  mind.  We  cannot 
pierce  to  any  absolute  order  and  harmony.  The  order  and 
the  harmony  we  perceive,  in  fact,  are  simply  modes  in  which 
the  human  mind  arranges  the  infinite  phenomena  of  an  ever- 
changing  world.  Time  and  space,  in  which  they  all  seem  to 
us  to  be  conditioned,  are  forms  of  the  human  intelligence. 
Why  do  we  assume  a  divine  origin  of  an  order  and  a  harmony 
that  are  conditioned  by  the  laws  of  our  very  finite  intelligence? 
The  order  and  harmony  then  seem  to  be  reflections  which  the 
mind  itself  projects  upon  the  revolving  panorama  of  the 
external  world.  So  far  as  they  prove  anything,  they  prove 
the  synthetic  power  of  the  human  spectator.  ISIan  is  quite 
conscious  that  the  world  has  not  a  human  origin;  and  that 
is  all  he  knows  of  origins  at  all. 

IMore  careful  examination  is  ever  showing  how  very  im- 
perfect is  the  order  which  the  science  of  the  last  century 
hastily  assumed  to  be  perfect.  The  moon,  we  used  to  be 
told  in  childhood,  was  created  to  give  light  to  the  earth,  and 
was  assumed  to  be  the  abode  of  happy  beings.  The  simplest 
geometry  can  prove  that  if  such  had  been  the  object,  it  had 
not  been  achieved,  although  it  was  very  easy  to  accomplish ; 
and  that  so  far  as  we  can  see,  the  moon  is  a  lifeless  void. 
The  result  of  modern  science  is  to  multiply  the  record  of  waste, 
ill-adjustment,  disorder,  and  strife  through  the  entire  physical 
universe.  "For  countless  ages,  this  earth  was  a  dungeon  of 
pestiferous  exhalations  and  a  den  of  wild  beasts."  It  was 
all  for  our  good,  we  are  told  by  theology,  and  so  was  the  crea- 
tion of  earthquakes,  disease,  death,  and  sin.  Modern  science 
is  far  too  cautious,  and  possibly  too  well -trained,  to  repeat 
the  ribaldry  of  the  Spanish  monarch  who  spoke  so  slightingly 
of  creation;  but  it  assures  us  in  every  corner  of  the  visible 
universe,  that  the  apparent  order  and  evolution  are  not  what 
human  science  would  have  recommended,  had  it  been  con- 

M 


1 62  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

suited  at  the  origin.  It  may  serve  some  higher  purpose. 
But,  humanly  speaking,  it  is  full  of  disorder. 

From  general  considerations  of  the  "Universal  Har- 
mony," Mr.  Call  passes  to  special  adaptations.  He  works 
out  the  argument  that  adaptation  implies  limitation.  An 
ingenious  artist  invents  the  safety  lamp  for  dangerous  mines. 
He  is  limited  by  the  antecedent  condition  of  inflammable 
gas.  But  why  should  Providence  in  its  mercy  create  fire- 
damp at  all  ?  And  if  it  at  last  gives  Man  the  means  of  coun- 
teracting fire-damp,  it  has  subjected  millions  to  cruel  death. 
The  whole  question  of  death,  of  the  decay,  disease,  and 
destruction  which  lead  to  death,  the  infinite  forms  of  organic 
suffering  and  of  physical  war  and  waste,  are  arrayed  by 
Mr.  Call  in  a  crushing  dilemma.  Things  around  us  may 
be  adapted  to  given  ends,  but  why  is  Man,  organic  nature, 
—  nay,  inorganic  nature, —  adapted  to  meet  such  agony, 
such  waste,  such  deadly  strife,  such  appalling  destruction? 
There  are  some  to  whom  all  this  has  seemed  to  testify  to  a 
diabolic  intelligence,  or  at  least  to  the  dualism  of  a  good  and 
evil  principle,  not  unequally  matched  and  waging  an  eternal 
war  with  alternate  success  and  defeat. 

The  champions  of  divine  adaptation  have  usually  selected 
a  particular  organ ;  and  none  has  given  rise  to  more  inge- 
nuity than  the  form  of  the  eye.  The  eye  is  unquestionably  a 
wonderful  example  of  complex  structure  adapted  to  a  subtle 
process.  Mr.  Call  quotes  Helmholtz's  criticism  of  the  eye 
as  an  optical  instrument.  The  defects  are  very  numerous 
and  easily  remediable  by  the  contriver  of  the  organ.  All 
kinds  of  imperfection  in  every  part  of  the  organ  are  obvious, 
and  are  easily  avoided  in  Man's  own  optical  instruments. 
Many  of  them  are  quite  familiar,  even  in  elementary  science. 
Professor  Tyndall  quotes  and  approves  Helmholtz's  saying, 
"that  if  an  optician  sent  him  an  instrument  so  full  of  defects 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  1 63 

as  the  human  eye,  he  would  be  justified  in  sending  it  back 
with  the  severest  censure."  The  defects  of  our  eye  exceed 
any  defects  of  our  telescope.  If  modern  astronomers  could 
design  the  eye  as  well  as  the  telescope,  what  might  we  not 
now  know !  Evolution,  or  spontaneous  adaptation  to  uses, 
by  gradual  and  struggling  steps,  fully  accounts  for  the  de- 
fects of  the  eye.  It  is  a  witness  to  evolution  —  but  not  to 
omniscience. 

Another  favourite  argument  of  Natural  Theology  is  the 
instinct  of  animals ;  and  none  has  been  more  popular  than 
our  old  friend  the  busy  bee.  It  used  to  be  held  that  the  cell 
of  the  bee-hive  showed  mathematical  attainments  of  a  high 
order,  as  exactly  the  form  best  adapted  to  store  the  maxi- 
mum of  honey  with  the  minimum  of  wax.  But  recent 
science  has  greatly  diminished  both  the  precision  and  the 
mysteriousness  of  the  bee's  cell.  Darwin  found  it  a  simple 
example  of  natural  selection;  and  a  reverend  bee-master 
observed  that  the  form  of  the  cell  was  the  mechanical  result 
of  six  bees  (the  number  which  could  form  a  ring  round  one) 
poking  their  heads  together.  The  bee  is  a  very  interesting 
animal;  but  its  "instinct"  is  not  more  surprising  than  that 
of  many  other  animals.  And  there  is  nothing  more  divine 
in  its  instinct  than  there  is  in  theirs.  And  no  "instinct" 
has  anything  like  the  divine  character  of  the  human  intel- 
ligence. And  this,  alas !  as  we  know  to  our  cost,  may  take 
a  truly  diabolic  turn  for  evil. 

Theologians  and  theistical  philosophers  have  long  aban- 
doned the  syllogisms  of  Voltaire  and  Palcy,  which  so  greatly 
delighted  our  grandfathers,  of  the  Universe  being  regarded  as 
a  work  of  art,  as  an  intricate  mechanism,  from  which  we  must 
infer  a  Creator,  as  we  infer  a  watchmaker  from  a  watch. 
More  acute  and  also  more  reverent  reflection  has  shown 
that  this  is  but  one  of  the  many  types  of  anthropomorphism. 


164  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

We  infer  a  watchmaker  when  we  find  a  watch,  only  because 
we  understand  the  watch's  uses  and  are  famUiar  with  the 
watchmaker's  art.  To  infer  that  we  can  follow  the  purpose 
of  the  watchmaker  of  the  Universe  is  to  attribute  to  the  Ab- 
solute and  the  Infinite  our  infinitesimal  limitations,  and  to 
measure  Omniscience  and  Omnipotence  by  the  Crude  ex- 
pedients which  mortal  men  employ  when  struggling  with  the 
difficulties  of  their  environment.  Art,  ingenuity,  elaborate 
mechanism,  presuppose  a  hard  fight  with  intractable  mate- 
rials, and  a  qualified  and  incomplete  result.  Logically,  the 
bare  idea  of  contrivance  is  a  contradiction  to  Creation. 
And  he  who  is  the  artist  or  the  mechanic  cannot  be  God. 

To  meet  this  dilemma  some  modern  theologians  postulate 
a  limited,  or  as  Mr.  Call  names  him,  a  constitutional  Deity. 
Mr.  Mill  rejected,  almost  with  indignation,  the  idea  of  an 
Omnipotent  Creator;  for  the  moral  evils  abounding  in 
Creation  shocked  his  sensitive  spirit.  He  argued,  as  others 
have  done,  for  some  Force,  external  to  the  Creator,  and  out- 
side of  Creation,  which  imposed  definite  limits  on  Deity, 
and  compelled  him  to  resort  to  expedients,  as  an  artificer 
does,  and  to  accept  evils  which  he  might  mitigate  but  could 
not  remove.  Mr.  Call  presses  home  the  irresistible  dilemma 
that  a  Creator,  so  limited,  is  no  Creator  at  all ;  that  a  power- 
ful, but  far  from  omnipotent  being,  struggling  with  the  ob- 
stacles which  an  External  Force  has  imposed  on  him,  like 
Prometheus  on  Caucasus,  does  not  answer  to  the  first  idea 
of  deity  at  all,  and  satisfies  none  of  the  yearnings  of  the  The- 
istic  conscience.  The  external  Force  would  be  the  ultimate 
Cause,  after  all,  the  presumed  Creator,  like  the  destiny  of  the 
ancient  Olympus.  An  idea  reconcilable  indeed  with  Poly- 
theism, but  assuredly  not  with  Monotheism. 

And  then,  as  Mr.  Call  points  out,  there  is  this  further 
difiicuhy.     On  what  ground  do  we  assume  absolute  Benevo- 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  1 65 

lence  with  limited  power,  rather  than  absolute  Power  with 
limited  goodness?  Our  ancestors,  who  were  less  sensitive 
than  we  are,  found  no  difficulty  in  accepting  fearful  moral 
dilemmas  in  the  mysterious  works  of  Providence ;  but  they 
would  never  admit  a  suspicion  of  a  check  on  Omnipotent 
Power.  Dante  saw  the  Law  of  Primal  Love  graven  on  the 
portals  of  Hell.  He  would  have  rent  his  garments  in  horror 
at  the  idea  of  a  Deity  who  found  himself  incessantly  baffled 
and  controlled.  Mr.  Mill,  like  many  sentimentalists,  shrank 
from  Hell  and  from  many  a  moral  dilemma,  and  preferred 
a  struggling  Deity  to  a  merciless  Deity.  But  there  is  not  the 
slightest  ground  in  logic  or  in  general  philosophy  why  we 
should  exalt  the  Goodness  of  the  Creator  at  the  expense  of  his 
Omnipotence,  and  escape  from  a  dilemma  by  voluntarily 
degrading  our  conception  of  Godhead.  A  limited  God 
implies  the  idea  of  many  Gods ;  and  however  much  men  may 
love  him,  they  will  fail  to  reverence  him.  A  struggling  God 
and  an  unjust  God  are  alike  contradictions  in  terms  —  at 
any  rate  to  those  who  think  belief  in  one  God  to  be  higher 
belief  in  many  Gods. 

The  most  important  and  interesting  part  of  Mr.  Call's 
work  is  devoted  to  the  conception  of  the  "Evolutionary 
God,"  i.e.  the  notion  of  Creation  as  affected  by  the  scientific 
theories  of  the  last  forty  years.  Natural  Theology,  like  so 
many  other  branches  of  thought,  has  had  to  recast  its  entire 
scheme  under  the  pressure  of  the  doctrine  of  evolution.  One 
resource  is,  to  imagine  the  gradual  and  tentative  process  of 
cvolutionar}^  adaptation  (which,  it  is  now  impossible  to  doubt, 
is  stamped  upon  living  Nature)  to  be  but  a  practical  working 
out  of  a  Type  or  Idea,  the  immediate  and  direct  emanation 
of  the  Creator.  It  is  curious  to  see  Platonism  revived  after 
two  thousand  years ;  but  the  part  which  Plato  had  in  founding 
the  orthodox  creed  has  been  fully  apj)reciatcd  only  by  Comtc, 


1 66  PHILOSOPHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

who  makes  Plato  the  chief  of  six  of  the  Fathers  of  the  Eastern 
Church,  including  St.  John  the  Evangelist.  Mr.  Call  points 
out,  with  unhesitating  logic,  the  weakness  involved  in  this  cir- 
cuitous Teleology,  which  only  puts  the  difficulty  one  step 
further  back,  and  simply  divides  into  two  sections  the  di- 
lemmas that  surround  all  ideas,  first,  of  a  First  Cause;  and 
next,  of  the  imperfections  and  strife  of  Nature. 

These  dilemmas  Mr.  Call  treats  under  the  five  heads  of: 
(i)  Destructive  action;  (2)  imperfect  execution;  (3)  use- 
less or  mischievous  contrivance ;  (4)  arbitrary,  capricious, 
and  whimsical  treatment ;  and  (5)  circuitous  procedure. 
Under  each  head  he  gives  us  a  body  of  striking  illustrations 
from  recent  scientific  authority.  The  vast  mass  of  the  lit- 
erature of  evolution  is  indeed  a  record  of  all  these  in  turn. 

1.  As  to  the  record  of  waste  and  destruction  the  growth 
of  modern  science  has  enormously  increased  our  conception 
of  its  range.  Microscopic  and  embryologic  study  present 
us  with  a  world  in  which  waste,  destruction,  and  mutual 
antagonism  appear  as  the  law  of  life  so  that  what  was  once 
recognised  as  Infinite  Creation  is  now  felt  to  be  balanced  by 
an  equally  Infinite  Destruction.  If  the  cosmos,  with  all  its 
continuous  dissolution,  be  the  work  of  one  Omnipotent  Force, 
it  would  be  as  logical  to  attribute  it  to  a  Destroyer  as  to  a 
Creator. 

2.  Imperfect  execution  seems  rather  the  rule  than  the 
exception,  when  we  study  Nature  by  the  light  of  evolution. 
The  bee's  sting,  which,  if  it  defends  the  animal,  cannot  be  used 
without  causing  its  death,  is  a  familiar  example.  The  whole 
natural  history  of  the  bee,  now  more  fully  understood,  is  one 
tale  of  frustrated  execution.  The  enormous  waste  of  drones, 
who  die  in  the  single  act  of  which  they  are  capable,  is  but 
one  example.  Though  the  frustration  of  purpose  is  most 
conspicuous  in  the  insects,  it  runs  through  the  whole  of  living 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  I 6/ 

Nature,  where  almost  every  function  is  liable  to  lead  direct 
to  opposite  consequences  as  the  environment  determines. 

3.  Useless  or  mischievous  contrivance  is  the  common- 
place of  the  evolutionist.  All  the  "sports"  and  anomalies 
of  Nature  are  examples.  The  growth  of  organs,  tissues, 
processes,  and  parts,  under  conditions  where  they  cannot 
serve  their  normal  functions,  and  only  conduce  to  mischief, 
is  familiar  to  all  pathologists  and  all  naturalists.  The  limbs 
concealed  in  the  outer  integument  so  as  to  be  utterly  useless, 
the  rudimentary  parts  of  Man  and  other  animals,  the  coccyx 
of  man,  the  concealed  eye  of  creatures  which  live  out  of  the 
light  and  do  not  see  at  all,  the  whole  history  of  hermaphro- 
ditism and  the  like  —  these  things  form  the  delight  and  pride 
of  the  Biologist,  inasmuch  as  they  testify  to  gradual  adapta- 
tion, whilst  they  are  the  despair  and  shame  of  the  Teleologist, 
for  they  testify  to  wasted  ingenuity  in  contriving  elaborate 
mechanism  that  leads  to  no  result  or  to  a  mischievous  result. 

4.  Wanton,  capricious,  and  whimsical  treatment  is  a 
kindred  field  of  evolutionar)^  observation.  Mr.  Darwin 
revelled  in  following  out  examples  of  this.  The  grotesque 
forms,  habits,  and  colours  of  the  animal  world,  their  fantastic 
tricks,  childish  vanities  and  amusements,  their  most  indecorous 
amours,  their  scoundrelly  and  murderous  propensities,  the 
diabolical  ingenuity  of  the  sphex  which  paralyses  without 
killing  spiders  to  form  a  living  food  for  its  grubs  when  hatched 
—  of  all  these  things  Nature  is  made.  They  have  intense 
interest  for  the  evolutionist,  whatever  disgust  they  excite 
in  the  moralist.  The  dilemma  of  the  teleologist  is  this :  if  all 
these  ludicrous  and  disgusting  contrivances  are  the  ideas  of 
Divine  Omnipotence,  it  is  difficult  to  bring  it  into  line  with 
the  first  postulates  of  human  morality  and  intelligence. 

5.  The  last  head,  circuitous  procedure,  is  the  most  abun- 
dant of  all.     Of  course,  the  entire  scheme  of  evolution  is  one 


1 68  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

of  circuitous,  gradual,  laborious  transformation,  under  the 
pressure  of  varying  conditions.  That  idea  alone  was  enough 
to  put  an  end  to  Teleology.  For  as  the  final  adaptation  to 
an  actual  end  is  fairly  complete  in  large  parts  of  Nature,  the 
idea  of  direct  creation  with  a  view  to  that  end  was  obvious, 
and  far  from  absurd.  But,  when  every  extant  organism  is 
found  or  supposed  to  have  passed  through  a  series  of  dis- 
parate stages,  and  organic  and  inorganic  Nature  is  conceived 
as  the  composite  outcome  of  infinite  transformation,  every- 
thing on  earth  is  assumed  to  have  an  origin  so  circuitous, 
multiform,  and  heterogeneous,  that  the  bare  idea  of  Creation 
for  that  end  becomes  at  once  repulsive  and  irrational.  And 
what  end  ?  —  for  in  evolution  there  is  neither  beginning 
nor  end.  And  if  all  things  living  have  slowly  emerged  out 
of  protoplasm  in  infinite  aeons  of  labour  and  change,  what  is 
there  of  divine  in  a  Creation  so  slow,  so  laborious,  and  so 
unlovely  ? 

Mr.  Call  concludes  his  book  with  a  warning  chapter  to 
remind  us  that  he  is  no  pessimist,  but  a  true  meliorist.  He 
sees  far  too  much  waste  and  horror  in  the  Universe  to  feel 
that  it  is  all  the  work  of  Omnipotent  Goodness.  He  sees  far 
too  much  growing  improvement  on  this  earth  not  to  hope  for 
an  ever  better  and  better  world.  He  is  careful  also  to  point 
out  that  he  has  not  argued  against  the  existence  of  God,  nor 
has  he  touched  any  single  ontological,  psychological,  or  moral 
argument  for  the  existence  of  Providence.  He  has  argued 
only  against  the  vain  attempt  to  prove  from  science  the  sup- 
posed design  of  an  assumed  Creation.  Nor,  he  is  careful  to 
add,  does  he  personally  refuse  to  accept  the  spiritual  ideals 
that  are  familiar  to  Christendom,  apart  from  the  pretensions 
of  Christian  dogma.  He  would  include  "the  teaching  of 
Jesus  and  of  Paul  in  one  series  with  that  of  their  predecessors 
and  successors."     In  a  fine  conclusion,  he  sums  up  the  hope 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  1 69 

of  the  religion  of  the  Future,  when  "Humanity  will  be  the 
sole  Ideal  Object  to  which  dutiful  obligation  and  exalted 
sentiment  will  be  referred,  and  the  world  of  Humanity  will 
be  the  world  revealed,  not  by  divine  inspiration  or  meta- 
physical intuition,  but  by  Positive  Science." 


XII 

LAW    OF   THE    THREE   STATES 

A   Reply  to  an  article  by  Bishop  Harvey  Goodwin  in  the 
"Nineteenth  Century,'^  October  1886 

Only  the  high  office  and  good  name  of  the  Bishop  of 
Carlisle  could  justify  serious  notice  of  his  article  entitled 
"Comte's  famous  Fallacy."  His  piece  is  based  on  a  mis- 
conception —  a  typical  example,  indeed,  of  ignorantia  elenchi 
—  nay,  a  misconception  which  has  often  before  been  made 
by  theologians,  and  which  has  been  over  and  over  again 
exposed.  Yet  such  is  the  persistence  of  the  "theological 
stage,"  even  in  the  nineteenth  century,  that  here  the  old  prim- 
itive "fiction"  about  the  meaning  of  Comte's  "law  of  the 
three  states"  crops  up  again  after  twenty  or  thirty  years, 
apparently  under  the  impression  that  it  is  a  new  discovery. 
To  any  serious  student  of  philosophy  it  might  be  enough  to 
cite  half  a  dozen  passages  from  Comte,  Mill,  Lewes,  and 
others,  to  show  that  the  "law  of  the  three  states"  has  no  such 
meaning  as  the  Bishop  puts  into  it.  But  when  a  writer,  who 
has  won  in  other  fields  a  deserved  reputation,  gravely  puts 
forth  a  challenge  to  his  philosophical  opponents,  although 
rather  by  way  of  sermon  and  for  edification  than  by  way  of 
strict  logic,  perhaps  it  is  respectful  to  do  more  than  cite  a 
few  passages  from  the  author  whom  he  attacks. 

Two  main  misconceptions  pervade  the  whole  of  the  Bishop's 
criticism  on  Comte's  law. 

First;  he  understands  the  "theological"  state  to  mean, 

170 


LAW   OF  THE  THREE   STATES  I7I 

a  belief  in  a  Creator;  the  "metaphysical"  state  to  mean,  gen- 
eral philosophy;  and  the  "positive"  state  to  mean,  the 
denial  of  Creation,  or  atheism.  Now,  that  never  was,  and 
never  was  understood  to  be,  Comte's  meaning. 

Secondly,  the  Bishop  assumes  Comte  to  have  said,  that 
men,  or  a  generation  of  men,  are  necessarily  at  any  given 
time,  in  one  or  other  of  the  three  states  exclusively,  passing 
per  saltum,  and  as  a  whole,  from  one  to  the  other ;  and  that 
one  mind  cannot  combine  any  two  states.  Now,  Comte  ex- 
pressly said  that  men  do  exhibit  traces  of  all  three  states  at  the 
same  time,  in  different  departments  of  thought. 

This  last  remark  of  his  obviously  proves  that  Comte  could 
not  have  meant  by  the  "theological  state,"  believing  in  God, 
and  by  the  "positive  state,"  the  denial  of  God;  because  no 
man  can  believe  and  deny  the  same  thing  at  the  same  time. 
Again,  had  Comte  said  that  every  man  "up  to  his  age"  can 
remember  that  he  believed  in  God  in  his  childhood,  and  that 
he  denied  his  existence  in  manhood,  he  would  have  said  some- 
thing so  transparently  false,  that  it  would  hardly  be  needful 
for  a  Bishop  forty  years  afterwards  to  write  an  essay  to  ex- 
pose so  very  "famous  a  fallacy."  Had  Comte's  law  of  the 
three  states  implied  what  the  Bishop  takes  it  to  mean,  it 
never  would  have  received  the  importance  attached  to  it  by 
friends  and  opponents  of  Positivism  alike;  it  never  would 
have  been  a  "famous  fallacy"  at  all ;  it  would  have  been  the 
"obvious  fallacy,"  and  would  have  called  forth  no  admira- 
tion from  eminent  thinkers. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  the  value  of  "the  law  of  the 
three  states"  has  been  acknowledged  by  men  who  have  been 
as  far  as  possible  from  being  "Positivists"  in  any  special 
sense  of  the  term,  and  who  have  been  foremost  in  repudiating 
Comte's  social  and  religious  scheme.  Mr.  Mill,  who  wrote 
a  book  to  that  effect,  expressed  his  profound  admiration  for 


172  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

this  particular  law  of  philosophy.  So  did  Mr.  G.  H.  Lewes 
in  his  History  of  Philosophy.  Miss  Martineau,  Professor 
Caird,  Mr.  John  Morley,  who  have  written  upon  the  system 
of  Comte,  have  given  us  no  criticism  upon  the  principle  in- 
volved in  this  "law  of  the  three  states."  It  is,  to  say  the 
least,  unlikely  that  writers  like  these  would  have  missed  so 
obvious  a  criticism  as  that  now  put  forth  by  the  Bishop,  had 
they  understood  Comte  as  he  does. 

Forty  years  ago,  Mr.  Mill  gave  an  admirably  lucid  account 
of  the  "law  of  the  three  states,"  and  at  the  same  time  ex- 
pressed his  agreement  with  it,  in  words  that  are  remarkable 
as  coming  from  so  cautious  and  measured  a  mind.  He 
says : — 

Speculation,  he  [Comte]  conceives  to  have,  on  every  subject  of  human 
inquiry,  three  successive  stages;  in  the  first  of  which  it  tends  to  explain 
the  phenomena  by  supernatural  agencies,  in  the  second  by  metaphysical 
abstractions,  and  in  the  third  or  final  state  confines  itself  to  ascertaining 
their  laws  of  succession  and  simihtude.  This  generalisation  appears 
to  me  to  have  that  high  degree  of  scientific  evidence,  which  is  derived  from 
the  concurrence  of  the  indications  of  history  with  the  probabilities  derived 
from  the  constitution  of  the  human  mind.  Nor  could  it  be  easily  con- 
ceived, from  the  mere  enunciation  of  such  a  proposition,  what  a  flood 
of  light  it  lets  in  upon  the  whole  course  of  history  {Logic,  vol.  ii.  chap.  x.). 

I.  By  the  term  "theological  state,"  Comte  does  not  mean 
the  ultimate  belief  in  God.  He  means,  as  Mr.  Mill  says  in 
the  words  quoted,  a  state  in  which  the  mind  "tends  to  ex- 
plain (given)  phenomena  by  supernatural  agencies."  Comte 
first  put  forth  his  law  in  an  essay  published  so  early  as  1822, 
where  he  states  the  theological  stage  to  be  one  where,  "the 
facts  observed  are  explained,  that  is  to  say,  conceived  a  priori, 
by  means  of  invented  facts."  (Pos.  Pol.  iv.  App.  iii.)  In 
his  General  View  of  Positivism,  he  calls  the  theological  stage 
that  "in  which  free  play  is  given  to  spontaneous  fictions  ad- 


LAW  OF  THE  THREE  STATES  1 73 

mitting  0}  no  proof."  In  the  Positive  Polity,  he  usually  calls 
it  the  Fictitious  stage.  The  theological  state  of  mind  is  one 
where  the  phenomena  we  observe  are  supposed  to  be  directly- 
caused  by  vital  agencies  which  we  imagine,  but  of  the  activity 
of  which  we  have  no  real  proof. 

This  state  is  certainly  not  identical  with  a  belief  in  God ; 
it  includes  all  forms  of  Fetichism,  of  Nature  worship,  Ghost 
worship,  or  Devil  worship:  and  all  the  habits  of  mind  out 
of  which  these  forms  of  worship  spring.  The  nonsense 
known  as  Spiritualism,  Spirit-rapping,  viewing  the  Dead,  and 
the  like,  is  a  typical  form  of  the  theological  state,  in  which 
men  give  "free  play  to  fictions  admitting  of  no  proof.''  And 
men,  otherwise  eminent  in  science  and  letters,  have  been 
known  so  to  play,  even  when  they  have  ceased  to  believe  in 
God. 

Not  only  is  Comte's  "theological  stage"  something  widely 
different  from  ultimate  belief  in  a  Creator,  but  few  educated 
men,  however  deeply  they  hold  such  belief,  are  now  in  what 
Comte  calls  the  "theological  stage."  To  all  minds  "up  to 
the  level  of  their  age,"  even  of  theologians  by  profession,  the 
phenomena  of  Nature  and  of  society  are  associated  with 
regular  antecedents,  capable  of  being  explained  by  known 
laws,  physical,  social,  or  moral.  That  is  in  fact  the  "posi- 
tive," or  scientific  state  of  thought.  If  a  man  has  a  fit,  or 
if  small-pox  breaks  out,  or  two  nations  go  to  war,  intelligent 
Christians  do  not  cry  aloud  that  it  is  a  special  judgment,  or 
the  wrath  of  God,  or  the  malice  of  the  Devil.  They  trace 
the  disease  or  the  war  to  its  scientific  causes,  or  rather  to  its 
positive  conditions.  Men  in  the  true  theological  stage 
attribute  ordinary  phenomena  to  the  direct  and  special  inter- 
position of  a  supernatural  being  of  some  kind.  This  was 
done  by  devotees  in  the  Middle  Ages;  is  still  done  by  Fetich- 
ists  everywhere ;  and  by  the  negroes  the  other  day  during  the 


174  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

earthquake  at  Charlestown.  But  cultivated  Englishmen 
do  not  so  reason.  In  fact,  very  few  thoughtful  men  in  our 
age  can  be  said  to  be,  properly  speaking,  in  the  theological 
stage  at  all.  They  reason  about  life  and  Man  on  the  basis 
of  both  being  amenable  to  observed  laws,  and  not  on  the 
basis  that  both  are  directly  subject  to  the  caprice  of  super- 
natural wills. 

The  habitual  reference  of  facts  to  observed  conditions  of 
nature,  physical  or  human,  does  not  prevent  strong  minds 
from  believing  in  Creation  and  a  Personal  Creator.  That 
is  a  very  different  thing.  They  refer  all  observed  facts  to 
observed  antecedents;  and  behind  this  enormous  mass  of 
observations,  they  assume  an  ultimate  source,  as  First  Cause. 
Mr.  Mill  indeed  insists  that  it  is  quite  compatible  with  the 
Positive  state  in  Comte's  sense,  to  believe  that  the  Universe 
is  guided  by  an  Intelligence.  Comte  himself  warmly  re- 
pudiates the  atheistical  hypothesis  of  the  origin  of  the  Uni- 
verse from  Chance.  He  calls  Atheism  a  form  of  Theology : 
meaning  that  Dogmatic  Atheism,  as  a  theory  of  the  Universe, 
is  "a  spontaneous  fiction  admitting  of  no  proof. ^^  He  thought 
that  a  mind  perfectly  attuned  to  scientific  habits  in  all  forms 
of  observed  facts,  would  cease  to  busy  itself  with  any  theory 
of  Origins,  and  would  be  entirely  absorbed  in  theories  of 
growth.  But  he  would  not  have  regarded  as  being  in  the 
theological  stage,  any  mind  which,  taking  a  scientific  view 
of  all  observed  phenomena,  clung  to  the  ultimate  solution  of 
their  origin  in  Creation. 

II.  By  the  "positive"  stage,  Comte  certainly  does  not 
mean  Atheism,  the  denial  of  a  possible  Creator.  In  the  first 
place,  he  repudiates  that  hypothesis,  as  itself  a  form  of  The- 
ological figment.  And  secondly,  he  says  that  the  Positive 
stage  is  that  "which  is  based  on  an  exact  view  of  the  real 
facts  of  the  case."     That  is  what  he  means :  neither  more  nor 


LAW   OF  THE  THREE   STATES  1 75 

less.  And  the  Bishop  is  quite  mistaken  in  constantly  as- 
suming that  Positive  is  either  Positivist  or  Atheist.  Comte 
neither  said,  nor  imagined,  that  any  man  who  "takes  an 
exact  view  of  the  real  facts"  in  each  case  is  a  Positivist  or  a 
believer  in  the  Religion  of  Humanity.  Dr.  Martineau  in  the 
passage  cited  with  approval  by  the  Bishop,  does  indeed  make 
Comte  say  that  every  cultivated  man  is  a  Positivist  in  his 
maturity.  That,  however,  is  only  a  bit  of  careless  rhetoric. 
Comte  says  nothing  of  the  kind.  Comte  says  that  a  culti- 
vated man  becomes  "a  natural  philosopher^^  in  his  maturity: 
—  meaning  a  man  whose  habit  of  mind  is  to  accept  scientific 
evidence  in  each  subject. 

III.  It  is  no  objection  at  all  to  the  "law  of  the  three 
states"  to  argue,  as  the  Bishop  does,  that  many  men  of  science 
are  not  atheists,  but  believers  in  God.  Even  if  the  "the- 
ological stage"  and  the  "positive  stage"  had  this  meaning 
(and  they  have  not)  Comte  has  carefully  guarded  himself  by 
saying  that  many  persons  exhibit  all  three  stages  at  the  same 
time,  on  different  subject-matters.  His  law  is  not  that  "each 
human  mind  passes  through  three  stages":  but  that  "each 
class  of  human  speculations  does."  If  that  were  Comte's 
meaning,  the  whole  of  the  Bishop's  criticism  falls  to  the 
ground.  And  it  is  easy  to  show  that  this  was  Comte's  mean- 
ing. 

Had  the  Bishop  pursued  his  study  of  Comte  a  little  beyond 
the  opening  pages  of  a  translation  of  one  of  his  works,  he 
would  have  found  this.  In  the  second  volume  of  the  Posi- 
tive Philosophy  (ist  ed.  p.  173),  v^re  read:  — 


During  the  whole  of  our  survey  of  the  sciences,  I  have  endeavoured 
to  keep  in  view  the  great  fact  that  all  the  three  states,  theological,  meta- 
physical, and  positive,  may  and  do  exist  at  the  same  time  in  the  same 
mind  in  regard  to  different  sciences.     I  must  once  more  recall  this  con- 


176  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

sideration,  and  insist  on  it ;  because,  in  the  forgetfulness  of  it,  lies  the 
only  real  objection  that  can  be  brought  against  the  grand  law  of  the 
three  states.  It  must  be  steadily  kept  in  view  that  the  same  mind  may 
be  in  the  positive  state  with  regard  to  the  most  simple  and  general 
sciences;  in  the  metaphysical  with  regard  to  the  more  complex  and 
special;  and  in  the  theological  with  regard  to  social  science,  which  is 
so  complex  and  special  as  to  have  hitherto  taken  no  scientific  form  at  all. 

Again  in  the  Positive  Polity,  iii.  p.  34:  — 

Although  each  class  of  speculations  really  passes  through  these  three 
successive  stages,  the  rate  of  progress  is  not  the  same  for  all.  Hence 
while  some  speculations  have  already  become  Positive,  others  still  remain 
Metaphysical  or  even  Theological;  and  so  it  will  be  till  our  race  has 
entirely  accomplished  its  initiation.  This  temporary  co-existence  of  the 
three  intellectual  states  furnishes  backward  thinkers  with  their  only  plaus- 
ible excuse  for  denying  my  law  of  filiation.  Nothing  will  completely 
clear  away  this  difficulty  but  the  complementary  rule,  which  lays  down 
that  the  unequal  rate  of  progress  is  caused  by  the  different  nature  of  the 
phenomena  in  each  class. 

In  the  Positivist  Catechism,  he  says  (Engl.  tr.  p.  174):  — 

Certain  theories  remain  in  the  metaphysical  stage;  whilst  others  of  a 
simpler  nature  have  already  reached  the  positive  stage;  others  again, 
still  more  complicated,  remain  in  the  theological  stage. 

It  is  thus  abundantly  clear  that  Comte  intended  his  law 
of  the  three  states  to  be  applied  not  to  the  mind  as  a  whole, 
nor  to  ages  as  a  whole  but  to  different  classes  of  speculation, 
and  to  the  prevalent  tendencies  in  different  ages.  And  so 
he  has  been  always  understood  by  his  exponents.  Mr. 
Mill  in  his  book,  Auguste  Comte  and  Positivism,  to  meet 
an  objection  such  as  the  Bishop  now  urges,  writes  thus :  — 
"that  the  three  states  were  contemporaneous,  that  they  all 
began  before  authentic  history,  and  still  co-exist,  is  M. 
Comte's  express  statement"  (p.  31). 


LAW   OF  THE  THREE   STATES  1 77 

And  SO  Mr.  G.  H.  Lewes,  in  his  more  lively  manner,  reply- 
ing to  similar  objections,  tells  us  in  his  History  of  Philosophy 
(vol.  ii.  p.  715):  — 

To  these  causes  of  opposition  must  also  be  added  the  license  men 
permit  themselves  of  pronouncing  confidently  on  questions  which  they 
have  not  taken  the  preliminary  trouble  of  understanding.  Two-thirds 
of  the  objections  urged  against  this  law  of  the  three  stages  are  based  on 
a  radical  misapprehension  of  it;  and  there  is  something  quite  comic  in 
the  gravity  with  which  these  misconceptions  are  advanced. 

The  law  does  not  assert  that  at  distinct  historical  periods  men  were 
successively  in  each  of  the  three  stages,  that  there  was  a  time  when  a 
nation  or  even  a  tribe  was  exclusively  theological,  exclusively  meta- 
physical, or  exclusively  positive;  it  asserts  that  the  chief  conceptions 
man  frames  respecting  the  world,  himself,  and  society,  must  pass  through 
three  stages,  with  varying  velocity  under  various  social  conditions,  but 
in  unvarying  order.  Any  one  individual  mind,  inheriting  the  results 
of  preceding  generations,  may  indeed  commence  its  thinking  on  some 
special  topic,  without  being  forced  to  pass  through  the  stages  which  its 
predecessors  have  passed  through ;  but  every  class  of  conceptions  must 
pass  through  the  stages,  and  every  individual  mind  must,  more  or  less 
rapidly,  in  the  course  of  its  evolution  from  infancy  to  maturity,  pass 
through  them. 

Another  eminent  controversialist,  once  Regius  Professor 
of  History  in  the  University  of  Oxford,  fell  into  the  same 
error  as  the  Bishop,  as  long  ago  as  1861,  and  he  was  corrected 
at  the  time.  This  is  how  the  blunder  was  corrected  in  the 
Westminster  Review,  N.  S.  xl. 

The  Review  said  :  — 

Comte  invariably  insists  that  the  three  stages  have  actually  co-existed 
in  nearly  all  minds.  He  says  that  a  man  takes  a  theological  view  of  one 
subject,  a  metaphysical  oif  another,  and  a  positive  of  a  third;  nor  did 
he  ever  pretend  that  one  of  these  methods  rigidly  excludes  the  other. 
Most  minds  retain  traces  of  all  three,  even  in  the  same  subject-matter. 
What  an  objector  has  really  to  show  is  this,  that  men  use  other  methods 
of  thought,  or  that  they  do  not  in  the  main  use  these  successively  in  the 
order  stated,  and  that  in  proportion  to  the  complication  of  the  subject- 
matter. 

N 


1^8  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

In  considering  a  law  of  the  human  mind,  such  as  this  is, 
we  should  bear  in  mind  the  golden  rule  of  Aristotle  "to 
demand  that  degree  of  precision  that  fits  the  matter  in  hand." 
A  law  of  our  mental  evolution,  dealing  with  a  subject  so 
subtle  and  complex  as  the  reasoning  processes,  does  not  admit 
of  absolutely  rigid  mathematical  exactness.  Mathematical 
reasoning  alone,  partly  because  pure  mathematics  spring 
mainly  from  laws  of  the  mind  itself,  and  are  not  inductions 
from  few  and  imperfect  observations,  admits  of  absolute 
precision.  In  no  physical  science,  perhaps,  is  the  reasoner 
at  all  times  strictly  employing  scientific  methods  without  alloy. 
Few  men  of  science,  however  competent,  are  incapable  of 
error  in  their  reasoning;  and  we  know  how  liable  they  are 
to  slide  into  dogmatism  a  good  deal  short  of  positive  proof. 
But  for  all  that,  a  trained  physicist,  or  chemist,  is  properly 
said  to  be  in  the  positive  stage  of  thought  when  reasoning 
about  physics,  or  chemistry. 

A  few  minds  trained  in  a  variety  of  sciences  may  remain 
at  a  uniformly  positive  level.  If  their  scientific  training 
embraces  history,  morals,  philosophy,  and  the  entire  range 
of  the  social,  moral,  and  intellectual  laws,  then  they  may 
be  said  to  have  completely  attained  to  the  positive  stage  of 
thought.  Now  the  Creation  of  the  Universe  and  the  Moral 
Providence  of  all  Creation  is  an  ultimate  resultant  of  a  raan's 
reflections  in  the  whole  range  of  speculation  —  physical, 
social,  intellectual,  and  moral.  And  to  that  great  assize 
of  human  thought,  few  men  in  England  come  with  a  full 
positive  training  in  the  entire  range.  Hence  the  opinions 
about  Creation  of  men  like  Herschel,  or  Faraday,  are  not  the 
opinions  of  men  in  the  positive  stage  of  thought,  but  of  men 
in  the  positive  stage  of  astronomy,  and  chemistry,  and  in  the 
metaphysical  or  the  theological  stage,  in  sociology  and  in 
morals. 


LAW  OF  THE  THREE   STATES  1 79 

When  Faraday  was  dealing  with  gases,  he  was  rigidly 
working  out  physical  and  chemical  problems  on  the  basis  of 
physical  and  chemical  laws.  If  he  discovered  a  new  elec- 
trical phenomenon,  he  did  not,  as  a  savage  or  an  alchemist 
might,  attribute  the  flash  to  some  latent  god,  or  an  explosion 
to  some  bottled-up  devil.  When  Faraday  was  dealing  with 
the  special  inspiration  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  he  deliberately  put 
aside  all  reference  to  law,  or  to  science;  and  he  w^as  in  the 
Theological  stage.  He  was  in  the  Metaphysical  stage  when 
he  was  dealing  with  some  big  political  problem,  and  then  he 
grounded  his  opinion  entirely  on  strong  prejudices  formed 
in  youth,  but  certainly  not  tested  as  he  tested  his  chemical 
compounds.  The  "law  of  the  three  states"  is,  like  all  other 
logical  laws,  a  law  of  tendency  in  a  subtle  and  complex  organ ; 
and  absolute  exactness  and  rigid  exclusiveness  is  out  of  place 
with  our  imperfect  mental  resources. 

When  Comte  said  that  one  state  of  mind  excludes  the 
other,  he  did  not  imply  that  a  reasoner  never  makes  a  slip, 
or  that  a  mind  in  the  positive  stage  may  not  at  times  "revert " 
back  into  a  less  scientific  process.  He  meant  that,  in  the 
main,  a  mind  accustomed  to  true  scientific  processes  in  any 
class  of  speculation  will  adhere  to  that  habit  of  mind,  though 
it  may  occasionally  lapse  in  its  own  subject,  and  may  fail 
to  apply  the  same  scientific  process  in  another  class  of  spec- 
ulation. The  Bishop  of  Carlisle  undoubtedly  applies  a  truly 
positive  process  to  the  science  of  physics,  though  perhaps 
he  would  hardly  claim  to  be  infallible  there,  even  in  method. 
But  in  dealing  with  a  philosophy  at  once  "pernicious  and 
dangerous,"  he  collates  the  original  authorities  with  far  less 
patient  scrutiny  than  when  he  is  tracing  the  growth  of  the 
Baconian  induction. 

Finally,  the  Bishop  seems  to  me  to  err  in  seeking  to  test 
the  "law  of  the  three  stages"  by  applying  it  to  exact  and  real 


l80  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

science.  He  declares  that  there  are  no  three  stages  in 
Mathematics,  in  the  science  of  Political  Economy,  and  many- 
such  branches  of  our  knowledge.  Certainly,  there  are  no 
three  stages  in  any  kind  of  real  knowledge.  Nor,  strictly 
speaking,  are  there  in  any  science  —  much  less  in  exact  science. 
All  real  knowledge,  all  science,  truly  so  named,  and  certainly 
an  exact  science,  like  pure  Mathematics,  is  already  positive. 
Comte  never  said  that  there  were  three  stages  in  science. 
He  says  there  are  "three  stages  in  each  branch  of  speculation." 
In  many  subjects,  which  are  perfectly  simple,  a  really  positive 
state  of  thought  is  reached  in  the  very  infancy  of  the  individual 
and  the  race.  No  doubt,  there  is  a  brief  moment  in  the  evo- 
lution of  thought  when  fictitious  beings,  or  crude  abstractions, 
are  supposed  to  determine  the  very  simplest  and  commonest 
facts.  When  scarcity  of  food  was  thought  to  be  a  Divine 
warning  to  a  King  who  defied  the  Pope,  or  when  a  strike 
was  supposed  to  result  from  some  physical  law  of  Supply  and 
Demand  beyond  human  control.  Political  Economy  was  in 
the  theological  or  the  metaphysical  stage.  That  merchants, 
manufacturers,  or  workmen  believe  in  Creation,  or  believe 
in  Adam  Smith,  or  in  Mr.  Ruskin,  has  nothing  to  do  with 
Comte's  law. 

As  to  Mathematics  something  further  may  be  said.  Pure 
Mathematics,  according  to  Comte,  are  really  a  branch  of 
Logic,  part  of  the  furniture,  an  analysis  of  the  processes, 
of  the  mind  itself.  There  are,  of  course,  not  three  stages  in 
the  "law  of  the  three  states"  itself,  or  in  any  other  true  logi- 
cal process.  Mathematics  are  wholly  positive,  i.e.  provable 
and  based  on  "an  exact  view  of  the  true  facts."  Everything 
that  we  can  call  Mathematics,  from  the  first  idea  of  addition, 
is  entirely  positive.  All  our  definite  notions  about  number, 
form,  and  movement  are  strictly  positive.  But  there  was  a 
time   before   the   birth   of   Mathematics;    and   then   men's 


LAW  OF  THE  THREE   STATES  l8l 

ideas  about  number,  form,  and  movement  were  in  a  meta- 
physical (that  is,  hypothetical)  stage,  or  even  in  a  theological 
stage  (that  is,  they  are  referred  to  supposed  wills).  Infants 
and  savages,  as  the  history  of  language  suggests,  associate 
changes  in  number  and  form  with  imaginary  vital  agents. 
A  child,  learning  that  two  and  two  make  four,  thinks  of  a 
person  purposely  giving  two  more  things.  The  counting 
and  measuring  of  savages  is  formed  out  of  organic  move- 
ments. In  Mathematics,  even  in  Arithmetic,  there  is  prop- 
erly none  but  a  positive  stage.  The  proper  sphere  of  the 
"law  of  the  three  stages"  is  in  the  observation  of  phenomena ; 
and  to  that  Comte  carefully  limits  it.  Directly  any  mind 
attains  to  real  knowledge  in  such  observations,  there  are  no 
further  stages  to  pass.  The  mind  remains  in  the  one  stage, 
the  positive,  or  final. 

I  shall  not  follow  the  Bishop  into  the  analogies  to  Comte's 
law,  with  which  his  reading  furnishes  him,  or  his  own  sub- 
stitute for  it.  I  fail  to  see  what  the  analogies  or  the  substi- 
tute have  to  do  with  the  matter.  The  "law  of  the  three 
states"  professes  to  be  a  theory  of  mental  evolution,  an  ac- 
count of  a  set  of  successive  processes  of  thought.  The 
Bishop's  analogies  and  his  substitute  profess  to  be  a  classi- 
fication of  ideas,  a  grouping  of  knowledge.  What  have  these 
in  common?  The  first  is  a  serial  record  of  movement;  the 
second  is  a  co-ordination  of  simultaneous  conceptions.  One 
might  as  well  find  analogies  between  history  and  logic ;  or 
suggest  that  Kepler's  laws  are  a  history  of  astronomy.  It  is 
quite  true  that  all  men's  knowledge  can  be  looked  at  from 
difTerent  points  of  view,  and  may  possibly  be  arranged  under 
three  groups.  But  how  does  that  help  us  to  explain  the 
genesis  of  thought  in  the  past?  So,  I  fail  to  sec  how  the 
citations  from  Bacon,  the  Philosophick  Cabbala,  or  Mr. 
Gladstone,  advance  the   matter   in   hand.     The   matter  in 


1 82  PHILOSOPHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

hand  is  the  law  of  progress  in  the  genesis  of  science.  No  one 
of  the  three  authors  cited  touches  on  that  subject.  And  is 
it  likely  that  Bacon,  Henry  More,  or  any  one  else  who  wrote 
before  any  true  science  existed  and  before  any  social  or  moral 
science  was  imagined,  could  tell  us  much  about  the  law  of 
progress  in  the  genesis  of  science?  So  I  leave  Bacon,  the 
Philosophick  Cabbala,  and  Mr.  Gladstone,  who  seems  to 
have  written  something  profound  on  the  latter  topic. 

With  the  Bishop's  proposed  substitute  for  Comte's  law 
I  have  no  wish  to  quarrel.  He  says  that,  instead  of  a  law 
of  the  three  successive  stages,  we  may  have  a  law  of  three 
simultaneous  modes  of  thought.  Certainly  we  may.  And 
the  Bishop  proposes  as  his  law  this  :  —  that  "many  branches 
of  knowledge  may  be  contemplated  from  three  points  of  view 
—  the  Theological,  the  Metaphysical  (or  Philosophical),  and 
the  Scientific."  With  a  slight  modification  of  the  terms,  to 
which  the  Bishop  ought  not  to  demur,  I  should  most  heartily 
assent  to  this.  Our  general  knowledge  is  Religious,  Philo- 
sophical, or  Scientific.  Religion,  Philosophy,  Science,  is  a 
threefold  co-ordination  of  ideas,  very  much  used  by  Comte : 
the  distinctions  between  the  three,  and  their  harm.onies  he 
is  constantly  expounding.  Positivism,  as  a  system  of  thought, 
does  not  mean  Science  only.  It  mean  Religion  —  Philos- 
ophy —  Science  :  each  in  their  sphere  completing  and  aid- 
ing the  other.  So  far  Comte  is  entirely  at  one  with  the  Bishop. 
But  this  eminently  Positivist  idea  is  no  sort  of  substitute  for 
the  "Law  of  the  three  stages." 

As  to  that  the  Bishop  must  try  again ;  and  I  cordially  in- 
vite him  to  do  so.  But  he  must  begin  by  understanding  the 
law  which  he  is  to  overthrow.  The  matter  in  hand  has  noth- 
ing to  do  with  the  belief  in  Providence,  in  the  sense  of  a 
"Great  First  Cause,  least  understood,"  as  modern  men  of 
science  conceive  Providence.     The  law  is  this  :  —  that  in  the 


LAW   OF  THE   THREE   STATES  1 83 

infancy  of  thought,  the  mind  attributes  changes  in  phenomena 
to  a  will  of  some  kind,  which  it  supposes  to  be  acting,  but  of 
which  it  has  no  real  proof ;  secondly,  that  the  mind  gradually 
passes  to  attribute  the  changes  to  some  abstract  principle, 
which  it  formulates  without  true  verification;  finally,  that 
the  mind  comes  to  take  an  exact  view  of  the  true  facts  of  the 
case.  These  three  modes  of  thought  pass  gradually  into 
each  other,  are  applied  to  different  matters  in  different  de- 
grees, and  in  the  early  stages  are  sometimes  only  traceable  in 
transient  prehistoric  types.  Now  what  an  objector  has  to  do 
is  to  show  —  that  the  sciences  have  been  built  up  by  some 
other  definitely  marked  stages,  or  have  passed  through  these 
stages  in  a  reverse  order,  or  do  not  pass  through  stages  at  all. 


XIII 

THE   SOUL   BEFORE   AND   AFTER   DEATH 

This  and  the  following  Essays  (xiii.,  xiv.,  xv.)  embodied  papers 
and  discussions  by  the  writer  at  the  Metaphysical  Society. 
They  were  printed  in  the  ^^ Nineteenth  Century,"  vol.  I., 
Numbers  4,  5,  7,  and  8  {June,  July,  September,  October, 
1877),  wherein  may  be  read  the  other  papers  by  Mr.  R.  H. 
Hutton,  Professor  Huxley,  Lord  Blachford,  Hon.  Roden 
Noel,  Lord  Selborne,  Rev.  Canon  Barry,  Mr.  W.  R. 
Greg,  Rev.  Baldwin  Brown,  and  Dr.  W.  G.  Ward. 

One  of  the  most  eminent  members  of  this  Society  was  once 
moved  to  say  to  me  in  his  impressive  way,  after  a  few  words 
of  mine  about  the  human  soul,  "If  I  thought  as  you  do  on 
these  matters,  I  should  go  and  drown  myself  forthwith." 
Now,  this  remark  of  our  illustrious  colleague  made  me  re- 
flect ;  for,  I  argued,  there  must  be  others  who,  with  him,  mis- 
judge the  condition  of  mind  in  which  so  many  of  us  find  rest, 
imputing  to  us  dreadful  ideas,  such  as  we  entirely  forswear ; 
and  I  resolved  that,  whenever  our  indefatigable  Secretary, 
with  his  remorseless  caduceus,  might  summon  me  to  the  bar 
of  this  tribunal  —  '^Omnes  eodem  cogimur,  omnium  versatur 
urna  serius  ocius  sors  exitura"  —  I  would  try  if  I  could  clear 
off  a  little  of  that  gloom  which  seems  to  hang  over  views  that 
so  many  persist  in  calling  Materialist,  and  then  explain  why 
those  who  maintain  what  I  prefer  to  call  the  rational  and 
satisfying  view  of  human  life  do  not  take  refuge  in  the  nearest 
pool. 

184 


THE   SOUL  185 

Not  that  I  am  so  sanguine  as  to  think  it  possible,  in  the  few 
minutes  that  the  patience  of  this  Society  allows  me,  to  argue 
such  a  mighty  question  as  Man's  future,  or  to  do  anything 
to  advance  the  issue  between  the  philosophy  which  rests  on 
experience  and  that  which  rests  on  hypothesis.  But  I  have 
often  observed  that  the  principal  value  of  our  discussions 
seems  to  lie  in  the  opportunity  they  afford  us  of  carefully 
laying  antagonistic  opinions  side  by  side,  of  more  exactly 
determining  our  own  and  our  opponents'  position,  and  in 
having  it  forced  on  us,  that  our  friends  do  somehow  avoid 
that  other  horn  of  the  dilemma  which  to  us,  arguing  for  them, 
seems  so  truly  inevitable.  I  shall  content  myself,  therefore, 
with  trying  only  to  define  our  point  of  view,  to  guard  it  from 
one  or  two  consequences  with  which  it  is  credited,  and  to 
claim  for  it  one  or  two  corollaries  which  are  often  denied  it. 
The  utmost  that  can  be  hoped  from  discussions  of  this  kind 
is  to  lead  controversialists  sometimes  to  see  that  there  is  more 
than  the  one  alternative  issue  possible  to  the  other  side,  that 
the  question  is  not  simply  Aid  Ccesar,  aut  nullus,  that  there 
is  something  else  to  choose  beside  Mahomet's  alternative, 
"the  Koran  or  Death." 

I  have  said  that  I  shall  make  no  attempt  to  establish  so  big 
a  proposition  as  that  from  which  I  start,  that  our  real  know- 
ledge rests  upon  experience ;  and  much  less  shall  I  attempt 
to  disprove  so  big  a  hypothesis  as  that  which  I  reject,  that 
there  are  channels  to  knowledge  of  far  higher  value  in  our 
aspirations.  I  make  a  courteous  salute  to  the  hypotheses  — 
non  ragioniam  di  lor,  non  guarda,  ma  passa  —  but  I  declare 
for  the  philosophy  of  experience  in  all  its  relations,  and  I  shall 
seek  to  show  that  in  itself  it  is  in  this,  as  in  other  matters, 
morally  sufficient,  that  it  leaves  no  voids  in  human  life,  and 
that  the  moral  and  religious  scquclfc  which  have  been  assigned 
to  it  have  no  real  existence.     The  issue  is  between  the  method 


1 86  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

of  looking  on  man  simply  as  man,  and  the  method  of  looking 
on  man  as  man  plus  a  heterogeneous  entity.  I  shall  not  deny 
the  existence  of  such  heterogeneous  entity,  and  I  shall  not 
undertake  to  prove  that  man  is  nothing  but  man.  But  as- 
suming that  he  is  so  limited,  and  assuming  that  the  hetero- 
geneous entity  is  as  perfectly  extra-human  as  it  professes 
to  be,  I  say  that  human  nature  is  adequately  equipped  on 
human  and  natural  grounds  without  the  disparate  nonde- 
script. 

I  am  careful  to  describe  the  method  I  am  defending  as  that 
which  looks  on  man  as  man,  and  I  repudiate  the  various  labels, 
such  as  materialist,  physical,  unspiritual  methods,  and  the 
like,  which  are  used  as  equivalent  for  the  rational  or  positive 
method  of  treating  man.  The  method  of  treating  man  as 
man  insists,  at  least  as  much  as  any  other  method,  that  man 
has  a  moral,  emotional,  religious  life,  different  in  kind  from 
his  material  and  practical  life,  but  perfectly  co-ordinate  with 
that  physical  life,  and  to  be  studied  on  similar  scientific 
methods.  The  spiritual  sympathies  of  man  are  undoubtedly 
the  highest  part  of  human  nature ;  and  our  method  condemns 
as  loudly  as  any  system  can  physical  explanations  of  spiritual 
life.  We  claim  the  right  to  use  the  terms  "soul,"  "spiritual," 
and  the  like,  in  their  natural  meaning. 

In  the  same  way,  we  think  that  there  are  theories  which 
are  justly  called  "Materialist,"  that  there  are  physical  con- 
ceptions of  human  nature  which  are  truly  dangerous  to  mo- 
rality, to  goodness,  and  religion.  It  is  sometimes  thought 
to  be  a  sufficient  proof  of  the  reality  of  this  heterogeneous 
entity  of  the  soul,  that  otherwise  we  must  assume  the  most 
spiritual  emotions  of  man  to  be  a  secretion  of  cerebral  matter, 
and  that,  whatever  the  difficulties  of  conceiving  the  union 
of  Soul  and  Body,  it  is  something  less  difficult  than  the  con- 
ceiving that  the  nerves  think,  or  the  tissues  love.     We  re- 


THE   SOUL  187 

pudiate  such  language  as  much  as  any  one  can,  but  there 
is  another  ahernative.  It  is  possible  to  invest  with  the  highest 
dignity  the  spiritual  life  of  mankind  by  treating  it  as  an  ulti- 
mate fact,  without  trying  to  find  an  explanation  for  it  either 
in  a  perfectly  unthinkable  hypothesis  or  in  an  irrational  and 
debasing  physicism. 

We  certainly  do  reject,  as  earnestly  as  any  school  can,  that 
which  is  most  fairly  called  Materialism,  and  we  will  second 
every  word  of  those  who  cry  out  that  civilisation  is  in  danger 
if  the  workings  of  the  human  spirit  are  to  become  questions 
of  physiology,  and  if  death  is  the  end  of  a  man,  as  it  is  the 
end  of  a  sparrow.  We  not  only  assent  to  such  protests,  but 
we  see  very  pressing  need  for  making  them.  It  is  a  cor- 
rupting doctrine  to  open  a  brain,  and  to  tell  us  that  devotion 
is  a  definite  molecular  change  in  this  and  that  convolution 
of  grey  pulp,  and  that  if  man  is  the  first  of  living  animals, 
he  passes  away  after  a  short  space  like  the  beasts  that  perish. 
And  all  doctrines,  more  or  less,  do  tend  to  this,  which  offer 
physical  theories  as  explaining  moral  phenomena,  which 
deny  man  a  spiritual  in  addition  to  a  moral  nature,  which 
limit  his  moral  life  to  the  span  of  his  bodily  organism,  and 
which  have  no  place  for  "religion"  in  the  proper  sense  of  the 
word. 

Docs  it  seem  to  any  one  a  paradox  to  hold  such  language, 
and  yet  to  have  nothing  to  say  about  the  immaterial  entity 
which  many  assume  to  be  the  cause  behind  this  spiritual  life? 
The  answer  is  that  we  occupy  ourselves  with  this  spiritual 
life  as  an  ultimate  fact,  and  consistently  with  the  whole  of 
our  philosophy,  we  decline  to  assign  a  cause  at  all.  We  argue, 
with  the  theologians,  that  it  is  ridiculous  to  go  to  the  scalpel 
for  an  adequate  account  of  a  mother's  love;  but  we  do  not 
think  it  is  explained  (any  more  than  it  is  by  the  scalpel)  by 
a  hypothesis  for  which  not  only  is  there  no  shadow  of  evidence, 


1 88  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

but  which  cannot  even  be  stated  in  philosophic  language. 
We  find  the  same  absurdity  in  the  notion  that  maternal  love 
is  a  branch  of  the  anatomy  of  the  mammcB,  and  in  the  notion 
that  the  phenomena  of  lactation  are  produced  by  an  imma- 
terial entity.  Both  are  forms  of  the  same  fallacy,  that  of 
trying  to  reach  ultimate  causes  instead  of  studying  laws. 
We  certainly  do  find  that  maternal  love  and  lactation  have 
close  correspondences,  and  that  both  are  phenomena  of  cer- 
tain female  organisms.  And  we  say  that  to  talk  of  maternal 
love  being  exhibited  by  an  entity  which  not  only  is  not  a 
female  organism,  but  is  not  an  organism  at  all,  is  to  use  lan- 
guage which  to  us,  at  least,  is  unintelligible. 

The  philosophy  which  treats  man  as  man  simply  affirms 
that  man  loves,  thinks,  acts,  not  that  the  ganglia,  or  the 
sinuses,  or  any  organ  of  man,  loves  and  thinks  and  acts. 
The  thoughts,  aspirations,  and  impulses  are  not  secretions, 
and  the  science  which  teaches  us  about  secretions  will  not 
teach  us  much  about  them;  our  thoughts,  aspirations,  and 
impulses  are  faculties  of  a  man.  Now,  as  a  man  implies  a 
body,  so  we  say  these  also  imply  a  body.  And  to  talk  to  us 
about  a  bodyless  being  thinking  and  loving  is  simply  to  talk 
about  the  thoughts  and  feelings  of  Nothing. 

As  I  began  by  saying,  I  am  not  presuming  to  ofTer  any 
argument  for  this  fundamental  position.  I  am  well  aware 
that  each  one  determines  it  according  to  the  whole  bias  of 
his  intellectual  and  moral  nature,  I  am  only  trying  to  state 
our  side  of  the  question,  and  then  to  suggest  that,  supposing 
it,  there  is  ample  scope  for  the  spiritual  life,  for  moral  re- 
sponsibility, for  the  world  beyond  the  grave,  its  hopes  and 
its  duties;  which  remain  to  us  perfectly  real  without  the 
unintelligible  hypothesis.  However  much  men  cling  to  the 
hypothesis  from  old  association,  if  they  reflect,  they  will  find 
that  they  do  not  use  it  to  give  them  any  actual  knowledge 


THE  SOUL  189 

about  man's  spiritual  life ;  that  all  their  methodical  reasoning 
about  the  moral  world  is  exclusively  based  on  the  phenomena 
of  this  world,  and  not  on  the  phenomena  of  any  other  world 
(if  any  there  be).  And  thus  the  absence  of  the  hypothesis 
altogether  does  not  make  the  serious  difference  which  theo- 
logians suppose. 

To  follow  out  this  into  particulars:  Analysis  of  human 
nature  shows  us  man  with  a  great  variety  of  faculties;  his 
moral  powers  are  just  as  distinguishable  as  his  intellectual 
powers;  and  both  are  mentally  separable  from  his  physical 
powers.  Moral  and  mental  laws  are  reduced  to  something 
like  system  by  moral  and  mental  science,  with  or  without  the 
theological  hypothesis.  The  most  extreme  form  of  mate- 
rialism does  not  dispute  that  moral  and  mental  science  is  for 
logical  purposes  something  more  than  physical  science.  So, 
the  most  extreme  form  of  spiritualism  gets  its  mental  and 
moral  science  by  observation  and  argument  from  phenomena ; 
it  does  not,  or  it  does  not  any  longer,  build  such  science  by 
abstract  deduction  from  any  proposition  as  to  an  immaterial 
entity. 

There  have  been,  in  ages  past,  attempts  to  do  this.  Plato, 
for  instance,  attempted  to  found,  not  only  his  mental  and 
moral  philosophy,  but  his  general  philosophy  of  the  universe, 
by  deduction  from  a  mere  hypothesis.  He  had  the  courage 
of  his  opinions,  and  he  imagined  immaterial  entities,  the 
ideas,  of  things  inorganic,  as  much  as  organic.  He  thought 
that  a  statue  or  a  chair  were  what  they  are,  by  virtue  of  an 
immaterial  entity  which  gave  them  form.  The  hypothesis 
did  not  add  much  to  the  art  of  statuar)^  or  to  that  of  the  car- 
penter; nor,  to  do  him  justice,  did  Plato  look  for  much  prac- 
tical result  in  these  spheres. 

One  form  of  the  doctrine  alone  survives,  —  that  man  is 
what  he  is  by  virtue  of  an  immaterial  entity  temporarily 


190 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 


indwelling  in  his  body.  But,  though  the  hypothesis  survives, 
it  is  in  no  sense  any  longer  the  basis  of  the  science  of  human 
nature  with  any  school.  No  school  is  now  content  to  sit 
in  its  study  and  evolve  its  knowledge  of  the  moral  qualities 
of  man  out  of  abstract  deductions  from  the  conception  of  an 
immaterial  entity.  All  without  exception  profess  to  get  their 
knowledge  of  the  moral  qualities  by  observing  the  qualities 
which  men  actually  do  exhibit  or  have  exhibited.  And  those 
who  are  persuaded  that  man  has,  over  and  above  his  man's 
nature,  an  immaterial  entity,  find  themselves  discussing  the 
laws  of  thought  and  of  character  on  a  common  ground  with 
those  who  regard  man  as  ma.n,—i.e.,  who  regard  man's 
nature  as  capable  of  being  referred  to  a  homogeneous  system 
of  law.  Spiritualists  and  materialists,  however  much  they 
may  differ  in  their  explanations  of  moral  phenomena,  de- 
scribe their  relations  in  the  same  language,  the  language  of 
law,  not  of  illuminism. 

Those,  therefore,  who  dispense  with  a  transcendental  ex- 
planation are  just  as  free  as  those  who  maintain  it,  to  handle 
the  spiritual  and  religious  phenomena  of  human  nature, 
treating  them  simply  as  phenomena.  No  one  has  ever  sug- 
gested that  the  former  philosophy  is  not  quite  as  well  entitled 
to  analyse  the  intellectual  faculties  of  man  as  the  stoutest 
believer  in  the  immaterial  entity.  It  would  raise  a  smile  Jiow- 
a-days  to  hear  it  said  that  such  an  one  must  be  incompetent 
to  treat  of  the  canons  of  inductive  reasoning,  because  he  was 
unorthodox  as  to  the  immortality  of  the  Soul.  And  if,  not- 
withstanding this  unorthodoxy,  he  is  thought  competent  to 
investigate  the  laws  of  thought,  why  not  the  moral  laws, 
the  sentiments,  and  the  emotions? 

As  a  fact,  every  moral  faculty  of  man  is  recognised  by  him 
just  as  much  as  by  any  transcendentalist.  He  does  not  limit 
himself,  any  more  than  the  theologian  does,  to  mere  morality. 


THE  SOUL  191 

He  is  fully  alive  to  the  spiritual  emotions  in  all  their  depth, 
purity,  and  beauty.  He  recognises  in  man  the  yearning  for 
a  power  without  to  venerate,  a  love  for  the  author  of  his  chief 
good,  the  need  for  sympathy  with  something  greater  than 
himself.  All  these  are  positive  facts  which  rest  on  observa- 
tion, quite  apart  from  any  explanation  of  the  hypothetical 
cause  of  these  tendencies  in  man.  There,  at  any  rate,  the 
scientific  observer  finds  them;  and  he  is  at  liberty  to  give 
them  quite  as  high  a  place  in  his  scheme  of  human  nature  as 
the  most  complete  theologian.  He  may  possibly  give  them 
a  far  higher  place,  and  bind  them  far  more  truly  into  the 
entire  tissue  of  his  whole  view  of  life,  because  they  are  built 
up  for  him  on  precisely  the  same  ground  of  experience  as 
all  the  rest  of  his  knowledge,  and  have  no  element  at  all 
heterogeneous  from  the  rest  of  life. 

With  the  language  of  spiritual  emotion  he  is  perfectly  in 
unison.  The  spirit  of  devotion,  of  spiritual  communion  with 
an  ever-present  powder,  of  sympathy  and  fellowship  with  the 
living  world,  of  awe  and  submission  towards  the  material 
world,  the  sense  of  adoration,  love,  resignation,  mystery, 
are  at  least  as  potent  with  the  one  system  as  with  the  other. 
He  can  share  the  religious  emotion  of  every  age,  and  can  enter 
into  the  language  of  every  truly  religious  heart.  For  myself, 
I  believe  that  this  is  only  done  on  a  complete  as  well  as  a  real 
basis  in  the  religion  of  Humanity,  but  I  do  not  confine  my 
present  argument  to  that  ground.  I  venture  to  believe  that 
this  spirit  is  truly  shared  by  all,  whatever  their  hypothesis 
about  the  human  soul,  who  treat  these  highest  emotions  of 
man's  nature  as  facts  of  primary  value,  and  who  have  any 
intelligible  theory  whereby  these  emotions  can  be  aroused. 

All  positive  methods  of  treating  man  of  a  comprehensive 
kind  adopt  to  the  full  all  that  has  ever  been  said  about  the 
dignity  of  man's  moral  and  spiritual  life,  and  treat  these 


192  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

phenomena  as  distinct  from  the  intellectual  and  the  physical 
life.  These  methods  also  recognise  the  unity  of  consciousness, 
the  facts  of  conscience,  the  sense  of  identity,  and  the  longing 
for  perpetuation  of  that  identity.  They  decline  to  explain 
these  phenomena  by  the  popular  hypotheses ;  but  they  neither 
deny  their  existence,  nor  lessen  their  importance.  Man, 
they  argue,  has  a  complex  existence,  made  up  of  the  phenom- 
ena of  his  physical  organs,  of  his  intellectual  powers,  of  his 
moral  faculties,  crowned  and  harmonised  ultimately  by  his 
religious  sympathies,  —  love,  gratitude,  veneration,  sub- 
mission, towards  the  dominant  force  by  which  he  finds  him- 
self surrounded. 

I  use  words  which  are  not  limited  to  a  particular  philosophy 
or  religion  —  I  do  not  confine  my  language  to  the  philosophy 
or  religion  of  Comte  —  for  this  same  conception  of  man  is 
common  to  many  philosophies  and  many  religions.  It 
characterises  such  systems  as  those  of  Spinoza  or  Shelley, 
as  much  as  those  of  Confucius  or  Buddha.  In  a  word,  the 
reality  and  the  supremacy  of  the  spiritual  life  have  never  been 
carried  further  than  by  men  who  have  departed  most  widely 
from  the  popular  hypotheses  of  the  immaterial  entity. 

Many  of  these  men,  no  doubt,  have  indulged  in  hypotheses 
of  their  own  quite  as  arbitrar}'  as  those  of  theology.  It  is 
characteristic  of  the  positive  thought  of  our  age  that  it  stands 
upon  a  firmer  basis.  Though  not  confounding  the  moral 
facts  with  the  physical,  and  establishing  a  moral  and  mental 
science  distinct  from  biological  science,  it  will  never  lose  sight 
of  the  correspondence  and  consensus  between  all  sides  of 
human  life.  Led  by  an  enormous  and  complete  array  of 
evidences,  it  associates  every  fact  of  thought  or  of  emotion 
with  a  fact  of  physiology,  with  molecular  change  in  the  body. 
Without  pretending  to  explain  the  first  by  the  second,  it 
denies  that  the  first  can  be  explained  without  the  second. 


THE  SOUL  193 

Thought  and  emotion  are  simply  powers  of  a  material  or- 
ganism, and  to  talk  to  us  of  thought  and  emotion  as  powers 
of  an  immaterial  entity,  is  to  talk  of  the  Function  of  Nothing. 
But  no  philosophy  is  so  careful  as  is  this  to  keep  always  in 
view  the  organic  correspondence  of  man's  faculties,  har- 
monised by  his  finest  sympathies.  We  call  this  consensus  his 
Soul. 

Nothing  is  more  idle  than  a  discussion  about  words.  But 
when  some  deny  the  use  of  the  word  "soul  "  to  those  who 
mean  by  it  this  consensus,  and  not  any  immaterial  entity,  we 
may  remind  them  that  our  use  of  the  word  agrees  with  its 
etymology  and  its  history.  It  is  the  mode  in  which  it  is  used 
in  the  Bible,  the  well-spring  of  our  true  English  speech. 
It  may,  indeed,  be  contended  that  there  is  no  instance  in  the 
Bible  in  which  Soul  does  mean  an  immaterial  entity,  the 
idea  not  having  been  familiar  to  any  of  the  writers,  with  the 
doubtful  exception  of  St.  Paul,  But  without  entering  upon 
Biblical  philology,  it  may  be  said  that  for  one  passage  in  the 
Bible  in  which  the  word  "soul"  can  be  forced  to  bear  the 
meaning  of  immaterial  entity,  there  are  ten  texts  in  which 
it  cannot  possibly  refer  to  anything  but  breath,  life,  moral 
sense,  or  spiritual  emotion.  When  the  Psalmist  says,  "De- 
liver my  soul  from  death,"  "Heal  my  soul,  for  I  have  sinned," 
"My  soul  is  cast  down  within  me,"  "Return  unto  my  rest, 
O  my  soul,"  he  means  by  "soul"  what  we  mean,  —  the  con- 
scious unity  of  our  being  culminating  in  its  religious  emotions ; 
and  until  we  find  some  English  word  that  better  expresses 
this  idea,  we  shall  continue  to  use  the  phraseology  of  David. 

It  is  not  merely  that  we  are  denied  the  language  of  religion, 
but  we  sometimes  find  attempts  to  exclude  us  from  the  thing. 
There  are  some  who  say  that  worship,  spiritual  life,  and  that 
exaltation  of  the  sentiments  which  we  call  devotion,  have  no 
possible  meaning  unless  applied  to  the  special  theology  of  the 


194  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

particular  speaker.  A  little  attention  to  history,  a  single 
reflection  on  religion  as  a  whole,  suffice  to  show  the  hollow- 
ness  of  this  assumption.  If  devotion  means  the  surrender 
of  self  to  an  adored  Power,  there  has  been  devotion  in  creeds 
with  many  gods,  with  one  God,  wuth  no  gods;  if  spiritual 
life  means  the  cultivation  of  this  temper  towards  moral  puri- 
fication, there  was  spiritual  life  long  before  the  notion  of  an 
immaterial  entity  inside  the  human  being  was  excogitated; 
and  as  to  worship,  men  have  worshipped,  with  intense  and 
overwhelming  passion,  all  kinds  of  objects,  organic  and  in- 
organic, material  and  spiritual,  abstract  ideas  as  well  as 
visible  forces.  Is  it  implied  that  Confucius,  and  the  count- 
less millions  who  have  followed  him,  had  no  idea  of  religion, 
as  it  is  certain  that  they  had  none  of  theology ;  that  Buddha 
and  the  Buddhists  were  incapable  of  spiritual  emotion ;  that 
the  Fire-worshippers  and  the  Sun-worshippers  never  prac- 
tised worship;  that  the  pantheists  and  the  humanists,  from 
Marcus  Aurelius  to  Fichte,  had  the  springs  of  spiritual  life 
dried  up  in  them  for  want  of  an  Old  or  New  Testament? 
If  this  is  intended,  one  can  only  wonder  at  the  power  of  a  self- 
complacent  conformity  to  close  men's  eyes  to  the  native 
dignity  of  man.  Religion  and  its  elements  in  emotion  — 
attachment,  veneration,  love  —  are  as  old  exactly  as  human 
nature.  They  moved  the  first  men,  and  the  first  women. 
They  have  found  a  hundred  objects  to  inspire  them,  and 
have  bowed  to  a  great  variety  of  powers.  They  were  in  full 
force  long  before  Theology  was,  and  before  the  rise  of  Chris- 
tianity ;  and  it  would  be  strange  indeed  if  they  should  cease 
with  the  decline  of  either.  It  is  not  the  emotional  elements 
of  Religion  which  fail  us.  For  these,  with  th,e  growing  good- 
ness of  mankind,  are  gaining  in  purity  and  strength.  Rather, 
it  is  the  intellectual  elements  of  Religion  which  are  con- 
spicuously at  fault.     We  need  to-day,  not  the  faculty  of 


THE  SOUL  195 

worship  (that  is  ever  fresh  in  the  heart),  but  a  clearer  vision 
of  the  power  we  should  worship.  Nay,  it  is  not  we  who  are 
borrowing  the  privileges  of  theology :  rather  it  is  theology 
which  seeks  to  appropriate  to  itself  the  most  universal 
privilege  of  man. 


XIV 
HEAVEN 

See  Introductory  Note  to  Essay  XIII 

How  many  men  and  women  continue  to  give  a  mechanical 
acquiescence  to  the  creeds,  long  after  they  have  parted  with 
all  definite  theology,  out  of  mere  clinging  to  some  hope  of  a 
future  life,  in  however  dim  and  inarticulate  a  way !  And 
how  many,  whose  own  faith  is  too  evanescent  to  be  put  into 
words,  profess  a  sovereign  pity  for  the  practical  philosophy 
wherein  there  is  no  place  for  their  particular  yearning  for  a 
Heaven  to  come !  They  imagine  themselves  to  be,  by  virtue 
of  this  very  yearning,  beings  of  a  superior  order,  and,  as  if 
they  inhabited  some  higher  zone  amidst  the  clouds,  they  flout 
sober  thought  as  it  toils  in  the  plain  below;  they  counsel 
it  to  drown  itself  in  sheer  despair  or  take  to  evil  living ;  they 
rebuke  it  with  some  sonorous  household  word  from  the  Bible 
or  the  poets  —  "Eat,  drink,  for  to-morrow  ye  die"  —  "Were 
it  not  better  not  to  be?"  And  they  assume  the  question 
closed,  when  they  have  murmured  triumphantly,  "Behind 
the  veil,  behind  the  veil." 

They  are  right,  and  they  are  wrong:  right  to  cling  to  a 
hope  of  something  that  shall  endure  beyond  the  grave; 
wrong  in  their  rebukes  to  men  who  in  a  different  spirit  cling 
to  this  hope  as  earnestly  as  they.  We  too  turn  our  thoughts 
to  that  which  is  behind  the  veil.  We  strive  to  pierce  its 
secret  with  eyes,  we  trust,  as  eager  and  as  fearless ;  and  even 
it  may  be  more  patient  in  searching  for  the  realities  beyond 

196 


HEAVEN  197 

the  gloom.  That  which  shall  come  ajler  is  no  less  solemn 
to  us  than  to  you.  We  ask  you,  therefore,  What  do  you 
know  of  it?  Tell  us;  we  will  tell  you  what  we  hope.  Let 
us  reason  together  in  sober  and  precise  prose. 

Why  should  this  great  end,  staring  at  all  of  us  along  the 
vista  of  each  human  life,  be  for  ever  a  matter  for  dithyrambic 
hypotheses  and  evasive  tropes?  What  in  the  language  of 
clear  sense  does  any  one  of  us  hope  for  after  death :  what 
precise  kind  of  life,  and  on  what  grounds  ?  It  is  too  great  a 
thing  to  be  trusted  to  poetic  ejaculations,  to  be  made  a  field 
for  Pharisaic  scorn.  At  least  be  it  acknowledged  that  a 
man  may  think  of  the  Soul  and  of  Death  and  of  Future  Life 
in  ways  strictly  positive  (that  is,  without  ever  quitting  the 
region  of  evidence),  and  yet  may  make  the  world  beyond  the 
grave  the  centre  to  himself  of  moral  life.  He  will  give  the 
spiritual  life  a  place  as  high,  and  will  dwell  upon  the  promises 
of  that  which  is  after  death  as  confidently  as  the  believers  in 
a  celestial  resurrection.  And  he  can  do  this  without  trust- 
ing his  all  to  a  perhaps  so  vague  that  a  spasm  of  doubt  can 
wreck  it,  but  trusting  rather  to  a  mass  of  solid  knowledge, 
which  no  man  of  any  school  denies  to  be  true  so  far  as  it  goes. 


There  ought  to  be  no  misunderstanding  at  the  outset  as  to 
what  we  who  trust  in  positive  methods  mean  by  the  word 
"Soul,"  or  by  the  words  "spiritual,"  "materialist,"  and 
"future  life."  We  certainly  would  use  that  ancient  and 
beautiful  word  "  Soul,"  provided  there  be  no  misconception 
involved  in  its  use.  We  assert  as  fully  as  any  theologian  the 
supreme  importance  of  spiritual  life.  We  agree  with  the 
theologians  that  there  is  current  a  great  deal  of  real  material- 
ism, deadening  to  our  higher  feeling.     And  we  deplore  the 


198  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

too  common  indifference  to  the  world  beyond  the  grave. 
And  yet  we  find  the  centre  of  our  reHgion  and  our  philoso- 
phy in  Man  and  Man's  Earth. 

To  follow  out  this  use  of  old  words,  and  to  see  that  there 
is  no  paradox  in  thus  using  them,  we  must  go  back  a  little 
to  general  principles.  The  matter  turns  altogether  upon 
habits  of  thought.  What  seems  to  you  so  shocking  will  often 
seem  to  us  so  ennobling,  and  what  seems  to  us  flimsy  will 
often  seem  to  you  sublime,  simply  because  our  minds  have 
been  trained  in  different  logical  methods ;  and  hence  you  will 
call  that  a  beautiful  truth  which  strikes  us  as  nothing  but 
a  random  guess.  It  is  idle,  of  course,  to  dispute  about  our 
respective  logical  methods,  or  to  pit  this  habit  of  mind  in  a 
combat  with  that.  But  we  may  understand  each  other 
better  if  we  can  agree  to  follow  out  the  moral  and  religious 
temper,  and  learn  that  it  is  quite  compatible  with  this  or  that 
mental  procedure.  It  may  teach  us  again  that  ancient  truth, 
how  much  human  nature  there  is  in  men;  what  fellowship 
there  is  in  our  common  aspirations  and  moral  forces;  how 
we  all  live  the  same  spiritual  life;  whilst  the  philosophies 
are  but  the  ceaseless  toil  of  the  intellect  seeking  again  and 
again  to  explain  more  clearly  that  spiritual  life,  and  to  fur- 
nish it  with  reasons  for  the  faith  that  is  in  it. 

This  would  be  no  place  to  expound  or  to  defend  the  posi- 
tive method  of  thought.  The  question  before  us  is  simply, 
if  this  positive  method  has  a  place  in  the  spiritual  world  or  has 
anything  to  say  about  a  future  beyond  the  grave.  Sufhce 
it  that  we  mean  by  the  positive  method  of  thought  (and  we 
will  now  use  the  term  in  a  sense  not  limited  to  the  social 
construction  of  Comte)  that  method  which  would  base  life 
and  conduct,  as  well  as  knowledge,  upon  such  evidence  as 
can  be  referred  to  logical  canons  of  proof,  which  would  place 
all  that  occupies  man  in  a  homogeneous  system  of  law.     On 


HEAVEN  199 

the  other  hand,  this  method  turns  aside  from  hypotheses  not 
to  be  tested  by  any  known  logical  canon  familiar  to  science, 
whether  the  hypothesis  claim  support  from  intuition,  aspira- 
tion, or  general  plausibility.  And  again,  this  method  turns 
aside  from  ideal  standards  which  avow  themselves  to  be  law- 
less, which  profess  to  transcend  the  field  of  law.  We  say, 
life  and  conduct  shall  stand  for  us  wholly  on  a  basis  of  law, 
and  must  rest  entirely  in  that  region  of  science  (not  physical 
but  moral  and  social  science)  where  we  are  free  to  use  our 
intelligence  in  the  methods  known  to  us  as  intelligible  logic, 
methods  which  the  intellect  can  analyse.  When  you  con- 
front us  with  hypotheses,  however  sublime  and  however 
affecting,  if  they  cannot  be  stated  in  terms  of  the  rest  of  our 
knowledge,  if  they  are  disparate  to  that  world  of  sequence 
and  sensation  which  to  us  is  the  ultimate  base  of  all  our  real 
knowledge,  then  we  shake  our  heads  and  turn  aside.  I  say, 
turn  aside;  and  I  do  not  say,  dispute.  We  cannot  disprove 
the  suggestion  that  there  are  higher  channels  to  knowledge 
in  our  aspirations  or  our  presentiments,  as  there  might  be 
in  our  dreams  by  night  as  well  as  by  day;  we  courteously 
salute  the  hypotheses,  as  we  might  love  our  pleasant  dreams ; 
we  seek  to  prove  no  negatives. 

We  do  not  pretend  there  arc  no  mysteries,  we  do  not  frown 
on  the  poetic  splendours  of  the  fancy.  There  is  a  world  of 
beauty  and  of  pathos  in  the  vast  aether  of  the  Unknown  in 
which  this  solid  ball  hangs  like  a  speck.  Let  all  who  list, 
who  have  true  imagination  and  are  not  merely  paltering 
with  a  loose  fancy,  let  them  indulge  their  gift,  and  tell  us  what 
their  soaring  has  unfolded.  Only  let  us  not  waste  life  in 
crude  dreaming,  or  loosen  the  knees  of  action.  For  life 
and  conduct,  and  the  great  emotions  which  react  on  life  and 
conduct,  we  can  place  nowhere  but  in  tlic  same  sphere  of 
knowledge,  under  the  same  canons  of  proof,  to  which  we 


200  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

entrust  all  parts  of  our  life.  We  will  ask  the  same  philosophy 
which  teaches  us  the  lessons  of  civilisation  to  guide  our  lives 
as  responsible  men ;  and  we  go  again  to  the  same  philosophy 
which  orders  our  lives  to  explain  to  us  the  lessons  of  death. 
We  crave  to  have  the  supreme  hours  of  our  existence  lighted 
up  by  thoughts  and  motives  such  as  we  can  measure  beside 
the  common  acts  of  our  daily  existence,  so  that  each  hour  of 
our  life  up  to  the  grave  may  be  linked  to  the  life  beyond  the 
grave  as  one  continuous  whole,  "bound  each  to  each  by 
natural  piety."  And  so,  wasting  no  sighs  over  the  incom- 
mensurable possibilities  of  the  fancy,  we  will  march  on  with 
a  firm  step  till  we  knock  at  the  Gates  of  Death;  bearing 
always  the  same  human  temper,  in  the  same  reasonable 
beliefs,  and  with  the  same  earthly  hopes  of  prolonged  activity 
amongst  our  fellows,  with  which  we  set  out  gaily  in  the  morn- 
ing of  life. 

When  we  come  to  the  problem  of  the  human  Soul,  we  simply 
treat  man  as  man,  and  we  study  him  in  accordance  with 
our  human  experience.  Man  is  a  marvellous  and  complex 
being,  we  may  fairly  say  of  complexity  past  any  hope  of  final 
analysis  of  ours,  fearfully  and  wonderfully  made  to  the  point 
of  being  mysterious.  But  incredible  progress  has  been  won 
in  reading  this  complexity,  in  reducing  this  mystery  to  order. 
Who  can  say  that  man  shall  ever  be  anything  but  an  object 
of  awe  and  of  unfathomable  pondering  to  himself?  Yet  he 
would  be  false  to  all  that  is  great  in  him,  if  he  decried  what 
he  already  has  achieved  towards  self-knowledge.  Man  has 
probed  his  own  corporeal  and  animal  life,  and  is  each  day 
arranging  it  in  more  accurate  adjustment  with  the  immense 
procession  of  animal  life  around  him.  He  has  grouped  the 
intellectual  powers,  he  has  traced  to  their  relations  the  func- 
tions of  mind,  and  ordered  the  laws  of  thought  into  a  logic 
of  a  regular  kind.     He  has  analysed  and  grouped  the  capac- 


HEAVEN  201 

ities  of  action,  the  moral  faculties,  the  instincts  and  emo- 
tions. And  not  only  is  the  analysis  of  these  tolerably  clear, 
but  the  associations  and  correlations  of  each  with  the  other 
are  fairly  made  manifest.  At  the  lowest,  we  are  all  assured 
that  every  single  faculty  of  man  is  capable  of  scientific  study. 
Philosophy  simply  means,  that  every  part  of  human  nature 
acts  upon  a  method,  and  does  not  act  chaotically,  inscrutably, 
or  in  mere  caprice. 

But  then  we  find  throughout  man's  knowledge  of  himself 
signs  of  a  common  type.  There  is  organic  unity  in  the  whole. 
These  laws  of  the  separate  functions,  of  body,  mind,  or  feel- 
ing, have  visible  relations  to  each  other,  are  inextricably 
woven  in  with  each  other,  act  and  react,  depend  and  inter- 
depend one  on  the  other.  There  is  no  such  thing  as  an  iso- 
lated phenomenon,  nothing  sui  generis,  in  our  entire  scrutiny 
of  human  nature.  Whatever  the  complexities  of  it,  there  is 
through  the  whole  the  solidarity  of  a  single  unit.  Touch  the 
smallest  fibre  of  the  corporeal  man,  and  in  some  infinitesimal 
way  we  may  watch  the  effect  in  the  moral  man,  and  we  may 
trace  this  effect  up  into  the  highest  pinnacles  of  the  spiritual 
life.  On  the  other  hand,  when  we  rouse  chords  of  the  most 
glorious  ecstasy  of  the  soul,  we  may  see  the  vibration  of  them 
visibly  thrilling  upon  the  skin.  The  very  brutes  about  us 
can  perceive  the  emotion.  Suppose  a  martyr  nerved  to  the 
last  sacrifice,  or  a  saint  in  the  act  of  relieving  a  sufferer,  the 
sacred  passion  within  them  is  stamped  in  the  eye,  or  plays 
about  the  mouth,  with  a  connection  as  visible  as  when  we 
see  a  muscle  acting  on  a  bone,  or  the  brain  affected  by  the 
supply  of  blood. 

Thus  from  the  summit  of  spiritual  life  to  the  base  of  cor- 
poreal life,  whether  we  pass  up  or  down  the  gamut  of  human 
forces,  there  runs  one  organic  correlation  and  sympathy 
of  parts.     Man  is  one,  however  compound.     Fire  his  con- 


202  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

science,  and  he  blushes.  Check  his  circulation,  and  he 
thinks  wildly,  or  thinks  not  at  all.  Impair  his  secretions, 
and  moral  sense  is  dulled,  discoloured,  or  depraved;  his 
aspirations  flag,  his  hope,  love,  faith  reel.  Impair  them  still 
more,  and  he  becomes  a  brute.  A  cup  of  drink  degrades  his 
moral  nature  below  that  of  a  swine.  Again,  a  violent  emo- 
tion of  pity  or  horror  makes  him  vomit.  A  lancet  will  re- 
store him  from  delirium  to  clear  thought.  Excess  of  thought 
will  waste  his  sinews.  Excess  of  muscular  exercise  will  deaden 
thought.  An  emotion  will  double  the  strength  of  his  muscles. 
And  at  last  the  prick  of  a  needle  or  a  grain  of  mineral  will  in 
an  instant  lay  to  rest  for  ever  his  body  and  its  unity,  and  all 
the  spontaneous  activities  of  intelligence,  feeling,  and  action, 
with  which  that  compound  organism  was  charged. 

These  are  the  obvious  and  ancient  observations  about  the 
human  organism.  But  modern  philosophy  and  science  have 
carried  these  hints  into  complete  explanations.  By  a  vast 
accumulation  of  proof  positive  thought  at  last  has  established 
a  distinct  correspondence  between  every  process  of  thought 
or  of  feeling  and  some  corporeal  phenomenon.  Even  when 
we  cannot  explain  the  precise  relation,  we  can  show  that 
delinite  correlations  exist.  To  positive  methods,  every  fact 
of  thinking  reveals  itself  as  having  functional  relation  with 
molecular  change.  Every  fact  of  will  or  of  feeling  is'  in 
similar  relation  with  kindred  molecular  facts.  And  all  these 
facts  again  have  some  relation  to  each  other. 

Hence  we  have  established  an  organic  correspondence 
in  all  manifestations  of  human  life.  To  think  implies  a  cor- 
responding adjustment  of  molecular  activity.  To  feel  emo- 
tion implies  nervous  organs  of  feeling.  To  will  implies  vital 
cerebral  hemispheres.  Observation,  reflection,  memory, 
imagination,  judgment,  have  all  been  analysed  out,  till  they 
stand  forth  as  functions  of  living  organs  in  given  conditions 


HEAVEN  203 

of  the  organism,  that  is  in  a  particular  environment.  The 
whole  range  of  man's  powers,  from  the  finest  spiritual  sen- 
sibility down  to  a  mere  automatic  contraction,  falls  into  one 
coherent  scheme :  being  all  the  multiform  functions  of  a 
living  organism  in  presence  of  its  encircling  conditions. 

But  complex  as  it  is,  there  is  no  confusion  in  this  whole 
when  conceived  by  positive  methods.  No  rational  thinker 
now  pretends  that  imagination  is  simply  the  vibration  of  a 
particular  fibre.  No  man  can  explain  volition  by  purely 
anatomical  study.  Whilst  keeping  in  view  the  due  relations 
between  moral  and  corporeal  facts,  we  distinguish  moral 
from  biologic  facts,  moral  science  from  biology.  IMoral 
science  is  based  upon  biological  science;  but  it  is  not  com- 
prised in  it :  it  has  its  own  special  facts  and  its  own  special 
methods,  though  always  remaining  within  the  sphere  of  law. 
Just  so,  the  mechanism  of  the  body  is  based  upon  mechanics, 
would  be  unintelligible  but  for  mechanics,  but  could  not  be 
explained  by  mechanics  alone,  or  by  anything  but  a  complete 
anatomy  and  biology.  To  explain  the  activity  of  the  intel- 
lect as  included  in  the  activity  of  the  body,  is  as  idle  as  to 
explain  the  activity  of  the  body  as  included  in  the  motion 
of  solid  bodies. 

And  it  is  equally  idle  to  explain  the  activity  of  the  will, 
or  the  emotions,  as  included  in  the  theory  of  the  intellect. 
All  the  spheres  of  human  life  are  logically  separable,  though 
they  arc  organically  interdependent.  Now  the  combined 
acitvity  of  the  human  powers  organised  around  the  highest 
of  them  we  call  the  Soul.  The  combination  of  intellectual 
and  moral  energy  which  is  the  source  of  Religion,  we  call 
the  spiritual  life.  The  explaining  the  spiritual  side  of  life 
by  physical  instead  of  moral  and  spiritual  reasoning,  we 
call  materialism. 

The  consensus  of  the  human  faculties,  which  we  call  the 


204  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

Soul,  comprises  all  sides  of  human  nature  according  to  one 
homogeneous  theory.  But  the  intuitional  methods  ask 
us  to  insert  into  the  midst  of  this  harmonious  system  of  parts, 
as  an  underlying  explanation  of  it,  an  indescribable  entity; 
and  to  this  hypothesis,  since  the  days  of  Descartes  (or  pos- 
sibly of  Aquinas),  the  fine  old  word  Soul  has  been  usually 
restricted.  How  and  when  this  entity  ever  got  into  the  or- 
ganism, how  it  abides  in  it,  what  are  its  relations  to  it,  how 
it  acts  on  it,  why  and  when  it  goes  out  of  it  —  all  is  mystery. 
We  ask  for  some  evidence  of  the  existence  of  any  such  entity ; 
the  answer  is,  we  must  imagine  it  in  order  to  explain  the 
organism.  We  ask  what  are  its  methods,  its  laws,  its  affini- 
ties ;  we  are  told  that  it  simply  has  none,  or  none  knowable. 
We  ask  for  some  description  of  it,  of  its  course  of  develop- 
ment, for  some  single  fact  about  it,  stateable  in  terms  of  the 
rest  of  our  knowledge ;  the  reply  is  —  mystery,  absence  of 
everything  so  stateable  or  cognisable,  a  line  of  poetry,  or 
an  ejaculation.  It  has  no  place,  no  matter,  no  modes, 
neither  evolution  nor  decay;  it  is  without  body,  parts,  or 
passions :  a  spiritual  essence,  incommensurable,  incom- 
parable, indescribable.  Yet  with  all  this,  it  is,  we  are  told, 
an  entity,  the  most  real  and  perfect  of  all  entities  short  of  the 
divine.  Nowadays  they  tell  us  that  it  is  an  emanation  of  the 
World-principle. 

If  we  ask  why  we  are  to  assume  the  existence  of  something 
of  which  we  have  certainly  no  direct  evidence,  and  which 
is  so  wrapped  in  mystery  that  for  practical  purposes  it  becomes 
a  nonentity,  we  are  told  that  we  need  to  conceive  it,  because 
a  mere  organism  cannot  act  as  we  see  the  human  organism 
act.  Why  not  ?  They  say  there  must  be  a  principle  within 
as  the  cause  of  this  life.  But  what  do  we  gain  by  supposing 
a  "principle"?  The  "principle"  only  adds  a  fresh  diffi- 
culty.    Why  should  a  "principle,"  or  an  entity,  be  more 


HEAVEN  205 

capable  of  possessing  these  marvellous  human  powers  than 
the  human  organism?  Besides,  we  shall  have  to  imagine 
a  "principle"  to  explain  not  only  why  a  man  can  feel  affec- 
tion, but  also  why  a  dog  can  feel  affection.  If  a  mother  can- 
not love  her  child  —  merely  qua  human  organism  —  unless 
her  love  be  a  manifestation  of  an  eternal  soul,  how  can  a 
cat  love  her  kittens  —  merely  qua  feline  organism  —  with- 
out an  immaterial  principle,  or  soul?  Nay,  we  shall  have 
to  go  on  to  invent  a  principle  to  account  for  a  tree  growing, 
or  a  thunderstorm  roaring,  and  for  every  force  of  nature. 
Now  this  very  supposition  was  made  in  a  way  by  the  Greeks, 
and  to  some  extent  by  Aquinas,  the  authors  of  the  vast  sub- 
structure of  anima  underlying  all  nature,  of  which  our  human 
Soul  is  the  fragment  that  alone  survives. 

One  by  one  the  steps  in  this  series  of  hypotheses  have  faded 
away.  Greek  and  mediaeval  philosophy  imagined  that  every 
activity  resulted  not  from  the  body  which  exhibited  the  ac- 
tivity, but  from  some  mysterious  entity  inside  it.  If  marble 
was  hard,  it  had  a  "form"  informing  its  hardness;  if  a  blade 
of  grass  sprang  up,  it  had  a  vegetative  spirit  mysteriously 
impelling  it ;  if  a  dog  obeyed  his  master,  it  had  an  animal 
spirit  mysteriously  controlling  its  organs.  The  mediaeval 
physicists,  as  Moliere  reminds  us,  thought  that  opium  in- 
duced sleep  quia  est  in  eo  virtus  dormitiva.  Nothing  was  al- 
lowed to  act  as  it  did  by  its  own  force  or  vitality.  In  every 
explanation  of  science  we  were  told  to  postulate  and  inter- 
calary hypothesis.  Of  this  huge  mountain  of  figment,  the 
notion  of  man's  immaterial  Soul  is  the  one  feeble  residuum. 

Orthodoxy  has  so  long  been  accustomed  to  take  itself  for 
granted,  that  we  are  apt  to  forget  how  very  short  a  period 
of  human  history  this  sublimated  essence  has  been  current. 
From  Plato  to  Hegel  the  idea  has  been  continually  taking 
fresh  shapes.     There  is  not  a  trace  of  it  in  the  Bible  in  its 


206  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

present  sense,  and  nothing  in  the  least  akin  to  it  in  the  Old 
Testament.  Till  the  time  of  Aquinas  theories  of  a  material 
soul,  as  a  sort  of  gas,  were  never  eliminated ;  and  until  the 
time  of  Descartes,  our  present  ideas  of  the  antithesis  of  Soul 
and  Body  were  never  clearly  defined.  Thus  the  Bible,  the 
Fathers,  and  the  Mediaeval  Church,  as  was  natural  when 
philosophy  was  in  a  state  of  flux,  all  represented  the  Soul  in 
very  different  ways ;  and  none  of  these  ways  were  those  of  a 
modern  divine.  It  is  a  curious  instance  of  the  power  of 
words  that  the  practical  weight  of  the  popular  religion  is 
now  hung  on  a  metaphysical  hypothesis,  which  itself  has 
been  in  vogue  for  only  a  few  centuries  in  the  history  of  spec- 
ulation, and  which  is  now  become  to  those  trained  in  positive 
habits  of  thought  a  mere  juggle  of  ideas. 

It  is  true  that  in  this  age,  or  rather  in  this  country,  we 
seldom  hear  the  stupid  and  brutal  materialism  which  pre- 
tends that  the  subtleties  of  thought  and  emotion  are  simply 
this  or  that  agitation  in  some  grey  matter,  to  be  ultimately 
expounded  by  the  professors  of  grey  matter.  But  this  is 
hardly  the  danger  which  besets  our  time.  The  true  ma- 
terialism to  fear  is  the  prevailing  tendency  of  anatomical 
habits  of  mind  or  specialist  habits  of  mind  to  intrude  into 
the  regions  of  religion  and  philosophy.  A  man  whose  whole 
thoughts  are  absorbed  in  cutting  up  dead  monkeys  and  live 
frogs  has  no  more  business  to  dogmatise  about  religion  than 
a  mere  chemist  to  improvise  a  zoology.  Biological  reasoning 
about  spiritual  things  is  as  presumptuous  as  the  theories 
of  an  electrician  about  the  organic  facts  of  nervous  life.  We 
live  amidst  a  constant  and  growing  usurpation  of  science  in 
the  province  of  philosophy;  of  biology  in  the  province  of 
sociology;  of  physics  in  that  of  religion.  Nothing  is  more 
common  than  the  use  of  the  term  science,  when  what  is 
meant  is  merely  physical  and  physiological  science,  not  social 


HEAVEN 


207 


and  moral  science.  The  arrogant  attempt  to  dispose  of  the 
deepest  moral  truths  of  human  nature  on  a  bare  physical 
or  physiological  basis  is  almost  enough  to  justify  the  insur- 
rection of  some  impatient  theologians  against  science  itself. 
It  is  impossible  not  to  sympathise  with  men  who  at  least  are 
defending  the  paramount  claim  of  the  moral  laws  and  the 
religious  sentiment. 

The  solution  of  the  dispute  is  that  physicists  and  the- 
ologians have  each  hold  of  a  partial  truth.  As  the  latter 
insist,  the  grand  problems  of  man's  life  must  be  ever  referred 
to  moral  and  social  argument;  but  then,  as  the  physicists 
insist,  this  moral  and  social  argument  can  only  be  built  up 
on  a  physical  and  physiological  foundation.  The  physical 
part  of  science  is  indeed  merely  the  vestibule  to  social,  and 
thence  to  moral  science;  and  of  science  in  all  its  forms  the 
philosophy  of  religion  alone  holds  the  key.  The  true  Ma- 
terialism lies  in  the  habit  of  scientific  specialists  to  neglect 
all  philosophical  and  religious  synthesis.  It  is  marked  by 
the  ignoring  of  religion,  the  passing  by  on  the  other  side, 
and  shutting  the  eyes  to  the  spiritual  history  of  mankind. 
The  spiritual  traditions  of  mankind,  a  supreme  philosophy 
of  life  and  thought,  religion  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  word, 
all  these  have  to  play  a  larger  and  ever  larger  part  in  human 
knowledge ;  not  as  we  are  so  often  told,  and  so  commonly  is 
assumed,  a  waning  and  vanishing  part.  And  it  is  in  this 
field,  the  field  which  has  so  long  been  abandoned  to  theology, 
that  Positivism  is  prepared  to  meet  the  theologians.  We 
at  any  rate  do  not  ask  them  to  submit  religion  to  the  test 
of  the  scalpel  or  the  electric  battery.  It  is  true  that  we  base 
our  theory  of  society  and  our  theory  of  morals,  and  hence 
our  religion  itself,  on  a  curriculum  of  physical,  and  especially 
of  biological  science.  It  is  true  that  our  moral  and  social 
science  is  but  a  prolongation  of  these  other  sciences.     But 


208  PHILOSOPHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

then  we  insist  that  it  is  not  science  in  the  narrow  sense  which 
can  order  our  beliefs,  but  Philosophy ;  not  science  which 
can  solve  our  problems  of  life,  but  Religion.  And  religion 
demands  for  its  understanding  the  religious  mind  and  the 
spiritual  experience. 

II 

The  rational  view  of  the  Soul  (as  we  have  seen)  would 
remove  us  as  far  from  a  cynical  materialism  as  from  a  fan- 
tastic spiritualism.  It  restores  to  their  true  supremacy  in 
human  life  those  religious  emotions  which  materialism  for- 
gets ;  whilst  it  frees  us  from  the  idle  figment  which  spiritual- 
ism would  foist  upon  human  nature. 

We  entirely  agree  with  the  theologians  that  our  age  is 
beset  with  a  grievous  danger  of  materialism.  There  is  a 
school  of  teachers  abroad,  and  they  have  found  an  echo  here, 
who  dream  that  victorious  vivisection  will  ultimately  win 
them  anatomical  solutions  of  man's  moral  and  spiritual  mys- 
teries. Such  unholy  nightmares,  it  is  true,  are  not  likely 
to  beguile  many  minds  in  a  country  like  this,  where  social 
and  moral  problems  are  still  in  their  natural  ascendant. 
But  there  is  a  subtler  kind  of  materialism  of  which  the  dangers 
are  real.  It  does  not  indeed  put  forth  the  bestial  sophism, 
that  the  apex  of  philosophy  is  to  be  won  by  improved  micro- 
scopes and  new  batteries.  But  then  it  has  nothing  to  say 
about  the  spiritual  life  of  man ;  it  has  no  particular  religion ; 
it  ignores  the  Soul.  It  fills  the  air  with  paeans  to  science; 
it  is  never  weary  of  vaunting  the  scientific  methods,  the  scien- 
tific triumphs.  But  it  always  means  physical,  not  moral 
science ;  intellectual,  not  religious  conquests. 

It  shirks  the  question  of  questions  —  to  what  human  end 
is  this  knowledge  —  how  shall  man  thereby  order  his  life 


HEAVEN 


209 


as  a  whole  —  where  is  he  to  find  the  object  of  his  yearnings 
of  spirit  ?  Of  the  spiritual  histor}'  of  mankind  it  knows  as 
little,  and  thinks  as  little,  as  of  any  crazy  sort  of  Asiatic  devil- 
worship.  At  the  spiritual  aspirations  of  the  men  and  women 
around  us,  ill  at  ease  for  want  of  some  answer,  it  stares 
blankly,  as  it  does  at  some  spirit-rapping  epidemic.  "What 
is  that  to  us  !  —  see  thou  to  that"  —  is  all  that  it  can  answer 
when  men  ask  it  for  a  religion.  Its  formula  is  that  it  is  of 
the  religion  of  all  sensible  men,  the  religion  which  all  sensible 
men  never  tell.  With  a  smile  or  a  shrug  of  the  shoulders 
it  passes  by  into  the  whirring  workshops  of  science  (that  is, 
the  physical  prelude  of  science) ;  and  it  leaves  the  spiritual 
life  of  the  Soul  to  the  spiritualists,  theological  or  nonsensical 
as  the  case  may  be,  wishing  them  both  in  heaven.  This  is 
the  materialism  to  fear. 

The  theologians  and  the  vast  sober  mass  of  serious  men 
and  women  who  want  simply  to  live  truly  are  quite  right  when 
they  shun  and  fear  a  school  that  is  so  eager  about  cosmology 
and  biolog}',  whilst  it  leaves  morality  and  religion  to  take  care 
of  themselves.  And  yet  they  know  all  the  while  that  before 
the  advancing  line  of  positive  thought  they  are  fighting  a  for- 
lorn hope ;  and  they  see  their  own  line  daily  more  and  more 
demoralised  by  the  consciousness  that  they  have  no  rational 
plan  of  campaign.  They  know  that  their  own  account  of 
the  Soul,  of  the  spiritual  life,  of  Providence,  of  Heaven,  is 
daily  shifting,  is  growing  more  vague,  more  inconsistent, 
more  various.  They  hurry  wildly  from  one  untenable  posi- 
tion to  another,  like  a  routed  and  disorganised  army. 

In  a  religious  discussion  years  ago  I  once  asked  one  of  the 
Broad  Church,  a  disciple  of  one  of  its  eminent  founders, 
what  he  understood  by  the  third  Person  of  the  Trinity; 
and  he  said  doubtfully  "that  he  fancied  there  was  a  sort  of  a 
something."     Since  those  days  the  process  of  disintegration 


2IO  PHILOSOPHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

and  vaporisation  of  belief  has  gone  on  rapidly;  and  now 
very  religious  minds,  and  men  who  think  themselves  to  be 
religious,  are  ready  to  apply  this  "sort  of  a  something"  to 
all  the  verities  in  turn.  They  half  hope  that  there  is  "a 
sort  of  a  something"  fluttering  about,  or  inside,  their  human 
frames,  that  there  may  turn  out  to  be  a  "something"  some- 
where after  Death,  and  that  there  must  be  a  sort  of  a  some- 
body or  (as  the  theology  of  Culture  will  have  it)  a  sort  of  a 
something  controlling  and  comprehending  human  life. 
But  the  more  thoughtful  spirits,  not  being  professionally 
engaged  in  a  doctrine,  mostly  limit  themselves  to  a  pious  hope 
that  there  may  be  something  in  it,  and  that  we  shall  know 
some  day  what  it  is. 

Now  theologians  and  religious  people  unattached  must 
know  that  this  will  never  serve  —  that  this  is  paltering  with 
the  greatest  of  all  things.  What  then  is  the  only  solution 
which  can  ultimately  satisfy  both  the  devotees  of  science  and 
the  believers  in  religion?  Surely  but  this,  to  make  religion 
scientific  by  placing  religion  under  the  methods  of  science. 
Let  Science  come  to  see  that  religion,  morality,  life,  are 
within  its  field,  or  rather  are  the  main  part  of  its  field.  Let 
Religion  come  to  see  that  it  can  be  nothing  but  a  prolonga- 
tion of  science,  a  rational  and  homogeneous  result  of  cos- 
mology and  biology,  not  a  matter  of  fantastic  guessing. 
Then  there  will  be  no  true  science  which  does  not  aim  at, 
and  is  not  guided  by,  systematic  religion.  And  there  will 
be  no  religion  which  pretends  to  any  other  basis  but  positive 
knowledge  and  scientific  logic.  But  for  this  science  must 
consent  to  add  spiritual  phenomena  to  its  curriculum,  and 
religion  must  consent  to  give  up  its  vapid  figments. 

Positivism  in  dealing  with  the  Soul  discards  the  exploded 
errors  of  the  materialists  and  the  spiritualists  alike.  On 
the  one  hand,  it  not  only  admits  into  its  studies  the  spiritual 


HEAVEN  211 

life  of  men,  but  it  raises  this  spiritual  life  to  be  the  essential 
business  of  all  human  knowledge.  All  the  spiritual  senti- 
ments of  man,  the  aspirations  of  the  conscious  soul  in  all  their 
purity  and  pathos,  the  vast  religious  experience  and  poten- 
tialities of  the  human  heart  seen  in  the  history  of  our  spiritual 
life  as  a  race  —  this  is,  we  say,  the  principal  subject  of  science 
and  of  philosophy.  No  philosophy,  no  morality,  no  polity 
can  rest  on  stable  foundations  if  this  be  not  its  grand  aim; 
if  it  have  not  a  systematic  creed,  a  rational  object  of  worship, 
and  a  definite  discipline  of  life.  But  then  we  treat  these 
spiritual  functions  of  the  Soul,  not  as  mystical  aenigmas,  but 
as  positive  phenomena,  and  we  satisfy  them  by  philosophic 
and  historic  answers  and  not  by  naked  figments.  And  we 
think  that  the  teaching  of  history  and  a  true  synthesis  of 
science  bring  us  far  closer  to  the  heart  of  this  spiritual  life 
than  do  any  spiritualist  guesses,  and  do  better  equip  us  to 
read  aright  the  higher  secrets  of  the  Soul :  meaning  always 
by  Soul  the  consensus  of  the  faculties  which  observation 
discovers  in  the  human  organism. 

On  the  other  hand,  without  entering  into  an  idle  dispute 
with  the  spiritualist  orthodoxy,  we  insist  on  regarding  this 
organism  as  a  perfectly  homogeneous  unit,  to  be  studied  from 
one  end  of  it  to  the  other  by  rational  scientific  methods.  We 
pretend  to  give  no  sort  of  cause  as  lying  behind  the  manifold 
powers  of  the  organism.  We  say  the  immaterial  entity  is 
something  which  we  cannot  grasp,  which  explains  nothing, 
for  which  we  cannot  have  a  shadow  of  evidence.  We  are  de- 
termined to  treat  man  as  a  human  organism,  just  as  we  treat 
a  dog  as  a  canine  organism ;  and  we  know  no  ground  for 
saying,  and  no  good  to  be  got  by  pretending,  that  man  is  a 
human  organism  plus  an  indescribable  entity.  We  say,  the 
human  organism  is  a  marvellous  thing,  sublime  if  you  will, 
of  subtlest  faculty  and  sensibility ;   but  we,  at  any  rate,  can 


212  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON  SENSE 

find  nothing  in  man  which  is  not  an  organic  part  of  this  or- 
ganism; we  find  the  facuhies  of  mind,  feeHng,  and  will, 
directly  dependent  on  physical  organs ;  and  to  talk  to  us  of 
mind,  feeling,  and  will  continuing  their  functions  in  the 
absence  of  physical  organs  and  visible  organisms,  is  to  use 
language  which,  to  us  at  least,  is  pure  nonsense. 

And  now  to  turn  to  the  great  phenomenon  of  material 
organisms  which  we  call  Death.  The  human  organism, 
like  every  other  organism,  ultimately  loses  that  unstable 
equilibrium  of  its  correlated  forces  which  we  name  Life, 
and  ceases  to  be  an  organism  or  system  of  organs,  adjusting 
its  internal  relations  to  its  external  conditions.  Thereupon 
the  existence  of  the  complex  independent  entity  to  which  we 
attribute  consciousness,  undoubtedly  —  i.e.  for  aught  we 
know  to  the  contrary  —  comes  to  an  end.  But  the  activities 
of  this  organism  do  not  come  to  an  end,  except  so  far  as  these 
activities  need  fresh  sensations  and  material  organs.  And 
a  great  part  of  these  activities,  and  far  the  noblest  part,  only 
need  fresh  sensations  and  material  organs  in  other  similar 
organisms.  Whilst  there  is  an  abundance  of  these  in  due 
relation,  the  activities  go  on  ad  infinitum  with  increasing 
energy. 

We  have  not  the  slightest  reason  to  suppose  that  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  organism  continues,  for  we  mean  by  con- 
sciousness the  sum  of  sensations  of  a  particular  organism, 
and  the  particular  organism  being  dissolved,  we  have  noth- 
ing left  whereto  to  attribute  consciousness,  and  the  proposal 
strikes  us  like  a  proposal  to  regard  infinity  as  conscious. 
So,  of  course,  with  the  sensations  separately,  and  with  them 
the  power  of  accumulating  knowledge,  of  feeling,  thinking, 
or  of  modifying  the  existence  in  correspondence  with  the 
outward  environment.  Life,  in  the  technical  sense  of  the 
word,  is  at  an  end,  but  the  activities  of  which  that  life  is  the 


HEAVEN  2 I 3 

source  were  never  so  potent.  Our  age  is  familiar  enough  with 
the  truth  of  the  persistence  of  energy,  and  no  one  supposes 
that  with  the  dissolution  of  the  body  the  forces  of  its  material 
elements  are  lost.  They  only  pass  into  new  combinations 
and  continue  to  work  elsewhere. 

Far  less  is  the  energy  of  the  activities  lost.  The  earth, 
and  every  country,  every  farmstead,  and  every  city  on  it,  are 
standing  witnesses  that  the  physical  activities  are  not  lost. 
As  century  rolls  after  century,  we  see  in  every  age  more  potent 
fruits  of  the  labour  which  raised  the  Pyramids,  or  won  Hol- 
land from  the  sea,  or  carved  the  Theseus  out  of  marble. 
The  bodily  organisms  which  wrought  them  have  passed  into 
gases  and  earths,  but  the  activity  they  displayed  is  producing 
the  precise  results  designed  on  a  far  grander  scale  in  each 
generation.  Much  more  do  the  intellectual  and  moral  en- 
ergies work  unceasingly.  Not  a  single  manifestation  of 
thought  or  feeling  is  without  some  result  so  soon  as  it  is 
communicated  to  a  similar  organism.  It  passes  into  the 
sum   of  his  mental  and  moral  being. 

But  there  is  about  the  persistence  of  the  moral  energies  this 
special  phenomenon.  It  marks  the  vast  interval  between 
physical  and  moral  science.  The  energies  of  material  ele- 
ments, so  far  as  we  see,  disperse,  or  for  the  most  part  disperse. 
The  energies  of  an  intellectual  and  moral  kind  are  very 
largely  continued  in  their  organic  unities.  The  consensus 
of  the  mental,  of  the  moral,  of  the  emotional  powers  may  go 
on,  working  as  a  whole,  producing  precisely  the  same  results, 
with  the  same  individuality,  whether  the  material  organism, 
the  source  and  original  base  of  these  powers,  be  in  physical 
function  or  not.  The  mental  and  moral  j)Owers  do  not,  it  is 
true,  increase  and  grow,  develop  or  vary  within  themselves. 
Nor  do  they  in  their  special  individuality  produce  visible 
results,  for  they  are  no  longer  in  direct  relations  with  their 


214  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

special  material  organisms.  But  the  mental  and  moral 
powers  are  not  dispersed  like  gases.  They  retain  their  unity, 
they  retain  their  organic  character,  and  they  retain  the  whole 
of  their  power  of  passing  into  and  stimulating  the  brains  of 
living  men ;  and  in  these  they  carry  on  their  activity  precisely 
as  they  did,  whilst  the  bodies  in  which  they  were  formed 
absorbed  and  exhaled  material  substance. 

Nay,  more;  the  individuality  and  true  activity  of  these 
mental  and  moral  forces  is  often  not  manifest,  and  sometimes 
is  not  complete,  so  long  as  the  organism  continues  its  physical 
functions.  Newton,  we  may  suppose,  has  accomplished  his 
great  researches.  They  are  destined  to  transform  half  the 
philosophy  of  mankind.  But  he  is  old,  and  incapable  of 
fresh  achievements.  We  will  say  he  is  feeble,  secluded, 
silent,  and  lives  shut  up  in  his  rooms.  The  activity  of  his 
mighty  intellectual  nature  is  being  borne  over  the  world  on 
the  wings  of  Thought,  and  works  a  revolution  at  every  stroke. 
But  otherwise  the  man  Newton  is  not  essentially  distinguish- 
able from  the  nearest  infirm  pauper,  and  has  as  few  and  as 
feeble  relations  with  mankind.  At  last  the  man  Newton 
dies  —  that  is,  the  body  is  dispersed  into  gas  and  dust. 
But  the  world,  which  is  affected  enormously  by  his  intel- 
lect, is  not  in  the  smallest  degree  affected  by  his  death.  His 
activity  continues  the  same ;  if  it  were  worth  while  to  con- 
ceal the  fact  of  his  death,  no  one  of  the  millions  who  are  so 
greatly  affected  by  his  thoughts  would  perceive  it  or  know 
it.  If  he  had  discovered  some  means  of  prolonging  a  torpid 
existence  till  this  hour,  he  might  be  living  now,  and  it  would 
not  signify  to  us  in  the  slightest  degree  whether  his  body 
breathed  in  the  walls  of  his  lodging  or  mouldered  in  the  vaults 
of  the  Abbey. 

It  may  be  said  that  if  it  does  not  signify  much  to  us,  it  signi- 
fies a  great  deal  to  Isaac  Newton.     But  is  this  true?    He  no 


HEAVEN 


215 


longer  eats  and  sleeps,  a  burden  to  himself ;  he  no  longer  is  tar- 
nishing his  great  name  by  feeble  theology  or  querulous  petti- 
ness. But  if  the  small  weaknesses  and  wants  of  the  flesh  are 
ended  for  him,  all  that  makes  Newton  (and  he  had  always 
lived  for  his  posthumous,  not  his  immediate  fame)  rises  into 
greater  activity  and  purer  uses.  We  make  no  mystical  or 
fanciful  divinity  of  Death ;  we  do  not  deny  its  terrors  or  its 
evils.  We  are  not  responsible  for  it,  and  should  welcome 
any  reasonable  prospect  of  eliminating  or  postponing  this 
fatality,  that  waits  upon  all  organic  nature.  But  it  is  no 
answer  to  philosophy  or  science  to  retort  that  Death  is  so 
terrible,  therefore  man  must  be  designed  to  escape  it.  There 
are  savages  who  persistently  deny  that  men  do  die  at  all, 
either  their  bodies  or  their  souls,  asserting  that  the  visible 
consequences  of  death  are  cither  an  illusion  or  an  artfully 
contrived  piece  of  acting  on  the  part  of  their  friends,  who 
have  really  decamped  to  the  happy  hunting-fields.  This 
seems  on  the  whole  a  more  rational  theory  than  that  of  im- 
material souls  flying  about  space,  as  the  spontaneous  fancies 
of  savages  are  sometimes  more  rational  than  the  elaborate 
hypotheses  of  metaphysics. 

But  though  we  do  not  presume  to  apologise  for  death, 
it  is  easy  to  see  that  many  of  the  greatest  moral  and  intellec- 
tual results  of  life  are  only  possible,  can  only  begin,  when  the 
claims  of  the  animal  life  are  satisfied;  when  the  stormy, 
complex,  and  chequered  career  is  over,  and  the  higher  tops 
of  the  intellectual  or  moral  nature  alone  stand  forth  in  the 
distance  of  time.  What  was  the  blind  old  harper  of  Scio 
to  his  contemporaries,  or  the  querulous  refugee  from  Flor- 
ence, or  even  the  boon-companion  and  retired  playwright 
of  Stratford,  or  the  bh"nd  and  stern  old  Puritan  of  Bunhill 
Fields?  The  true  work  of  Socrates  and  his  life  only  began 
with  his  resplendent  death,  to  say  nothing  of  yet  greater 


2l6  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON  SENSE 

religious  teachers,  whose  names  I  refrain  from  citing;  and 
as  to  those  whose  Hves  have  been  cast  in  conflicts  —  the 
Csesars,  the  Alfreds,  the  Hiidebrands,  the  Cromwells,  the 
Fredericks  —  it  is  only  after  death,  oftenest  in  ages  after 
death,  that  they  cease  to  be  combatants,  and  become  creators. 
It  is  not  merely  that  they  are  only  recognised  in  after-ages; 
the  truth  is,  that  their  activity  only  begins  when  the  surging 
of  passion  and  sense  ends,  and  turmoil  dies  away.  Great 
intellects  and  great  characters  are  necessarily  in  advance  of 
their  age;  the  care  of  the  father  and  the  mother  begins  to 
tell  most  truly  in  the  ripe  manhood  of  their  children,  when  the 
parents  are  often  in  the  grave,  and  not  in  the  infancy  which 
they  see  and  are  confronted  with.  The  great  must  always 
feel  with  Kepler,  —  "It  is  enough  as  yet  if  I  have  a  hearer 
now  and  then  in  acentury."  John  Brown's  body  lies  a-mould- 
ering  in  the  grave,  but  his  soul  is  marching  along. 

We  can  trace  this  truth  best  in  the  case  of  great  men ;  but 
it  is  not  confined  to  the  great.  Not  a  single  act  of  thought  or 
character  ends  with  itself.  Nay,  more ;  not  a  single  nature  in 
its  entirety  but  leaves  its  influence  for  good  or  for  evil.  As 
a  fact  the  good  prevail ;  but  all  act,  all  continue  to  act  indefi- 
nitely, often  in  ever-widening  circles.  Physicists  amuse  us 
by  tracing  for  us  the  infinite  fortunes  of  some  wave  set  in 
motion  by  force,  its  circles  and  its  repercussions  perpetually 
transmitted  in  new  complications.  But  the  career  of  a  single 
intellect  and  character  is  a  far  more  real  force  when  it  meets 
with  suitable  intellects  and  characters  into  whose  action  it  is 
incorporated.  Every  life  more  or  less  forms  another  life,  and 
lives  in  another  life.  Civilisation,  nation,  city,  imply  this 
fact.  There  is  neither  mysticism  nor  hyperbole,  but  simple 
observation  in  the  belief,  that  the  career  of  every  human  being 
in  society  does  not  end  with  the  death  of  its  body.  In  some 
sort  its  higher  activities  and  potency  can  only  begin  truly 


HEAVEN  217 

when  change  is  no  longer  possible  for  it.  The  worthy  gain 
in  influence  and  in  range  at  each  generation,  just  as  the 
founders  of  some  populous  race  gain  a  greater  fatherhood 
at  each  succeeding  growth  of  their  descendants.  And  in 
some  infinitesimal  degree,  the  humblest  life  that  ever  turned 
a  sod  sends  a  wave  —  nay,  more  than  a  wave,  a  life  — 
through  the  ever-growing  harmony  of  human  society.  Not 
a  soldier  died  at  Marathon  or  Salamis,  but  did  a  stroke  by 
which  our  thought  is  enlarged  and  our  standard  of  duty 
formed  to  this  day. 

Be  it  remembered  that  this  is  not  hypothesis,  but  something 
perfectly  real,  —  we  may  fairly  say  undeniable.  We  are 
not  inventing  an  imaginary  world,  and  saying  it  must  be  real 
because  it  is  so  pleasant  to  think  of;  we  are  only  repeating 
truths  on  which  our  notion  of  history  and  society  is  based. 
The  idea,  no  doubt,  is  usually  limited  to  the  famous,  and  to 
the  great  revolutions  in  civilisation.  But  no  one  who  thinks 
it  out  carefully  can  deny  that  it  is  true  of  every  human  being 
in  society  in  some  lesser  degree.  The  idea  has  not  been,  or 
is  no  longer,  systematically  enforced,  invested  with  poetry 
and  dignity,  and  deepened  by  the  solemnity  of  religion.  But 
why  is  that  ?  Because  theological  hypotheses  of  a  new  and 
heterogeneous  existence  have  deadened  our  interest  in  the 
realities,  the  grandeur,  and  the  perpetuity  of  our  earthly 
life. 

In  the  best  days  of  Rome,  even  without  a  theory  of  history 
or  a  science  of  society,  it  was  a  living  faith,  the  true  religion 
of  that  majestic  race.  It  is  the  real  sentiment  of  all  societies 
where  the  theological  hypothesis  has  disappeared.  It  is  no 
doubt  now  in  England  the  great  motive  of  virtue  and  energy. 
There  have  been  few  seasons  in  the  world's  histor)'  when  the 
sense  of  moral  responsibility  and  moral  survival  after  death 
was  more  exalted  and  more  vigorous  than  with  the  companions 


2l8  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

of  Vergniaud  and  Danton,  to  whom  the  dreams  of  theology 
were  hardly  intelligible.  As  we  read  the  calm  and  humane 
words  of  Condorcet  on  the  very  edge  of  his  yawning  grave, 
we  learn  how  the  conviction  of  posthumous  activity  (not  of 
posthumous  fame),  how  the  consciousness  of  a  coming  in- 
corporation with  the  glorious  future  of  his  race,  can  give  a 
patience  and  a  happiness  equal  to  that  of  any  martyr  of  the- 
ology. 

It  would  be  an  endless  inquiry  to  trace  the  means  whereby 
this  sense  of  posthumous  participation  in  the  life  of  our  fellows 
can  be  extended  to  the  mass,  as  it  certainly  affects  already  the 
thoughtful  and  the  refined.  Without  an  education,  a  new 
social  opinion,  without  a  religion  —  I  mean  an  organised 
religion,  not  a  vague  metaphysic  —  it  is  doubtless  impossible 
that  it  should  become  universal  and  capable  of  overcoming 
selfishness.  But  make  it  at  once  the  basis  of  philosophy,  the 
standard  of  right  and  wrong,  and  the  centre  of  a  religion, 
and  this  will  prove,  perhaps,  an  easier  task  than  that  of  teach- 
ing Greeks  and  Romans,  Syrians  and  Moors,  to  look  forward 
to  a  future  life  of  ceaseless  psalmody  in  an  immaterial  heaven. 
The  astonishing  feat  was  performed ;  and,  perhaps,  it  may 
be  easier  to  fashion  a  new  public  opinion,  requiring  merely 
that  an  accepted  truth  of  philosophy  should  be  popularised, 
which  is  already  the  deepest  hope  of  some  thoughtful  spirits, 
and  which  does  not  take  the  suicidal  course  of  trying  to  cast  out 
the  devil  of  selfishness  by  a  direct  appeal  to  the  personal  self. 

It  is  here  that  the  strength  of  the  human  future  over  the 
celestial  future  is  so  clearly  pre-eminent.  Make  the  future 
hope  a  social  activity,  and  we  give  to  the  present  life  a  social 
ideal.  Make  the  future  hope  personal  beatitude,  and  per- 
sonality is  stamped  deeper  on  every  act  of  our  daily  life. 
Now  we  make  the  future  hope,  in  the  truest  sense,  social, 
inasmuch  as  our  future  is  simply  an  active  existence  pro- 


HEAVEN  219 

longed  by  society.  And  our  future  hope  rests  not  in  any  vague 
yearning,  of  which  we  have  as  little  evidence  as  we  have 
definite  conception :  it  rests  on  a  perfectly  certain  truth,  ac- 
cepted by  all  thoughtful  minds,  the  truth  that  the  actions, 
feelings,  thoughts  of  every  one  of  us  —  our  minds,  our  char- 
acters, our  souls  as  organic  wholes  —  do  marvellously  influ- 
ence and  mould  each  other ;  that  the  highest  part  of  ourselves, 
the  abiding  part  of  us,  passes  into  other  lives  and  continues 
to  live  in  other  lives. 

Can  we  conceive  a  more  potent  stimulus  to  rectitude, 
to  daily  and  hourly  striving  after  a  true  life,  than  this  ever- 
present  sense  that  we  are  indeed  immortal ;  not  that  we  have 
an  immortal  something  within  us,  but  that  in  very  truth  we 
ourselves,  our  thinking,  feeling,  acting  personalities,  are  im- 
mortal; nay,  cannot  die,  but  must  ever  continue  what  we 
make  them,  working  and  doing,  if  no  longer  receiving  and 
enjoying  ?  And  not  merely  we  ourselves,  in  our  personal  iden- 
tity, are  immortal,  but  each  act,  thought,  and  feeling  is  im- 
mortal; and  this  immortality  is  not  some  ecstatic  and  in- 
describable condition  in  space,  but  activity  on  earth  in  the 
real  and  known  work  of  life,  in  the  welfare  of  those  whom  we 
have  loved,  and  in  the  happiness  of  those  who  come  after  us. 

And  can  it  be  difficult  to  idealise  and  give  currency  to  a 
faith,  which  is  a  certain  and  undisputed  fact  of  common 
sense  as  well  as  of  philosophy?  As  we  live  for  others  in  life, 
so  we  live  in  others  after  death,  as  others  have  lived  in  us, 
and  all  for  the  common  race.  How  deeply  does  such  a  belief 
as  this  bring  home  to  each  moment  of  life  the  mysterious  per- 
petuity of  ourselves  !  For  good,  for  evil,  we  cannot  die;  we 
cannot  shake  ourselves  free  from  this  eternity  of  our  faculties. 
There  is  here  no  promise,  it  is  true,  of  eternal  sensations,  en- 
joyments, meditations.  There  is  no  promise,  be  it  plainly 
said,  of  anything  but  an  immortality  of  influence,  of  spiritual 


220  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

work,  of  glorified  activity.  We  cannot  even  say  that  we  shall 
continue  to  love;  but  we  know  that  we  shall  be  loved.  It 
may  well  be  that  we  shall  consciously  know  no  hope  ourselves ; 
but  we  shall  inspire  hopes.  It  may  be  that  we  shall  not  think ; 
but  others  will  think  our  thoughts,  and  enshrine  our  minds. 
If  no  sympathies  shall  thrill  along  our  nerves,  we  shall  be  the 
spring  of  sympathy  in  distant  generations;  and  that,  though 
we  be  the  humblest,  and  the  least  of  all  the  soldiers  in  the 
human  host,  the  least  celebrated  and  the  worst  remembered. 
For  our  lives  live  when  we  are  most  forgotten;  and  not  a 
cup  of  water  that  we  may  have  given  to  an  unknown  sufferer, 
or  a  wise  word  spoken  in  season  to  a  child,  but  has  added 
(whether  we  remember  it,  whether  others  remember  it  or 
not)  a  streak  of  happiness  and  strength  to  the  world.  Our 
earthly  frames,  like  the  grain  of  wheat,  may  be  laid  in  the 
earth  —  and  this  image  of  our  great  spiritual  Master  is  more 
fit  for  the  social  than  for  the  celestial  future  —  but  the  grain 
shall  bear  spiritual  fruit,  and  multiply  in  kindred  natures 
and  in  other  selves. 

It  is  a  merely  verbal  question  if  this  be  the  life  of  the  Soul 
when  the  Soul  means  the  sum  of  the  activities,  or  if  there  be 
any  immortality  where  there  is  no  consciousness.  It  is  enough 
for  us  that  we  can  trust  to  a  real  prolongation  of  our  highest 
activity  in  the  sensible  lives  of  others,  even  though  our  own 
forces  can  gain  nothing  new,  and  are  not  reflected  in  a  sensi- 
tive body.  We  do  not  get  rid  of  Death,  but  we  transfigure 
Death.  Does  any  religion  profess  to  do  more  ?  It  is  enough 
for  any  creed  that  it  can  teach  non  omnis  moriar ;  it  would  be 
gross  extravagance  to  say  omnis  non  moriar,  no  part  of  me 
shall  die.  Death  is  the  one  inevitable  law  of  Life.  The 
business  of  religion  is  to  show  us  what  are  its  compensations. 
The  spiritualist  orthodoxy,  like  every  other  creed,  is  willing 
to  allow  that  death  robs  us  of  a  great  deal,  that  very  much 


HEAVEN  221 

of  US  does  die ;  nay,  it  teaches  that  this  dies  utterly,  for  ever, 
leaving  no  trace  but  dust.  And  thus  the  spiritualist  ortho- 
doxy exaggerates  death,  and  adds  a  fresh  terror  to  its  power. 
We,  on  the  contrary,  would  seek  to  show  that  much  of  us, 
and  that  the  best  of  us,  does  not  die,  or  at  least  does  not  end. 
And  the  difference  between  our  faith  and  that  of  the  orthodox 
is  this :  we  look  to  the  permanence  of  the  activities  which  give 
others  happiness;  they  look  to  the  permanence  of  the  con- 
sciousness which  can  enjoy  happiness.  Which  is  the  nobler  ? 
What  need  we  then  to  promise  or  to  hope  more  than  an 
eternity  of  spiritual  influence?  Yet,  after  all,  'tis  no  question 
as  to  what  kind  of  eternity  man  would  prefer  to  select.  We 
have  no  evidence  that  he  has  any  choice  before  him.  If 
we  were  creating  a  universe  of  our  own  and  a  human  race 
on  an  ideal  mould,  it  might  be  rational  to  discuss  what  kind 
of  eternity  was  the  most  desirable,  and  it  might  then  become 
a  question  if  we  should  not  begin  by  eliminating  death. 
But  as  we  are,  with  death  in  the  world,  and  man  as  we  know 
him  submitting  to  the  fatality  of  his  nature,  the  rational  in- 
quiry is  this  —  how  best  to  order  his  life,  and  to  use  the  eter- 
nity that  he  has.  And  an  immortality  of  prolonged  activity 
on  earth  he  has  as  certainly  as  he  has  civilisation,  or  progress, 
or  society.  And  the  wise  man  in  the  evening  of  life  may  be 
well  content  to  say :  "I  have  worked  and  thought,  and  have 
been  conscious  in  the  flesh ;  I  have  done  with  the  flesh,  and 
therewith  with  the  toil  of  thought  and  the  troubles  of  sensa- 
tion ;  I  am  ready  to  pass  into  the  spiritual  community  of 
human  souls,  and  when  this  man's  flesh  wastes  away  from 
me,  may  I  be  found  worthy  to  become  part  of  the  influence  of 
humanity  itself,  and  so 

Join  the  choir  invisible 
Whose  music  is  the  gladness  of  the  world." 


222  PHILOSOPHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

That  the  doctrine  of  the  celestial  future  appeals  to  the 
essence  of  self  appears  very  strongly  in  its  special  rebuke  to 
the  doctrine  of  the  social  future.  It  repeats,  "We  agree  with 
all  you  say  about  the  prolonged  activity  of  man  after  death, 
we  see  of  course  that  the  solid  achievements  of  life  are  carried 
on,  and  we  grant  you  that  it  signifies  nothing  to  those  who 
profit  by  his  work  that  the  man  no  longer  breathes  in  the 
flesh :  but  what  is  all  that  to  the  man,  to  you,  and  to  me  ?  we 
shall  not  feel  our  work,  we  shall  not  have  the  indescribable 
satisfaction  which  our  souls  now  have  in  living,  in  effecting 
our  work,  and  profiting  by  others.  What  is  the  good  of  man- 
kind to  me,  when  I  am  mouldering  unconscious?" 

This  is  the  true  materialism;  here  is  the  physical  theory 
of  another  life;  this  is  the  unspiritual  denial  of  the  soul,  the 
binding  it  down  to  the  clay  of  the  body.  We  say,  "All  that 
is  great  in  you  shall  not  end,  but  carry  on  its  activity  per- 
petually and  in  a  purer  way" ;  and  you  reply,  "What  care  I 
for  what  is  great  in  me,  and  its  possible  work  in  this  vale  of 
tears;  I  want  to  feel  life,  I  want  to  enjoy,  I  want  my  per- 
sonality," —  in  other  words,  "I  want  my  senses,  I  want  my 
body."  Keep  your  body  and  keep  your  senses  in  any  way 
that  you  know.  We  can  only  wonder  and  say,  with  Frederic 
to  his  runaway  soldiers,  "  Wollt  ihr  immer  leben?"  But  we, 
who  know  that  a  higher  form  of  activity  is  only  to  be  reached  by 
a  subjective  life  in  society,  will  continue  to  regard  a  perpetuity 
of  mere  sensation  without  any  power  to  act  or  any  being  to 
love  as  the  true  Hell,  for  we  feel  that  the  perpetual  worth  of 
our  lives  is  the  one  thing  precious  to  care  for,  and  not  an  eter- 
nity of  vacuous  consciousness. 

It  is  not  merely  that  this  eternity  of  psalmody  is  so  gross, 
so  sensual,  so  indolent,  so  selfish  a  creed;  but  its  worst  evil 
is  that  it  paralyses  practical  life,  and  throws  it  into  discord. 
A  life  of  vanity  in  a  vale  of  tears  to  be  followed  by  an  infinity 


HEAVEN  223 

of  celestial  rapture,  is  necessarily  a  life  which  is  of  infinitesimal 
importance.  The  incongruity  of  the  attempts  to  connect  the 
two,  and  to  make  the  vale  of  tears  the  ante-chamber  or  the 
judgment-dock  of  heaven,  grows  greater  and  not  less  as  ages 
roll  on.  The  more  we  think  and  learn,  and  the  higher  rises 
our  social  philosophy  and  our  insight  into  human  destiny, 
the  more  the  reality  and  importance  of  the  social  future  im- 
presses us,  whilst  the  fancy  of  the  celestial  future  grows  un- 
real and  incongruous.  As  we  get  to  know  what  thinking 
means,  and  feeling  means,  and  the  more  truly  we  understand 
what  life  means,  the  more  completely  do  the  promises  of  the 
celestial  transcendentalism  fail  to  interest  us. 

We  have  come  to  see  that  to  continue  to  live  is  to  carry  on 
a  series  of  correlated  sensations,  and  to  set  in  motion  a  series 
of  corresponding  forces ;  to  think  is  to  marshal  a  set  of  ob- 
served perceptions  with  a  view  to  certain  observed  phe- 
nomena ;  to  feel  implies  something  of  which  we  have  a  real 
assurance  affecting  our  own  consensus  within.  The  whole 
set  of  positive  thoughts  compels  us  to  believe  that  it  is  an  in- 
finite apathy  to  which  your  heaven  would  consign  us,  without 
objects,  without  relations,  without  change,  without  growth, 
without  action,  an  absolute  nothingness,  a  nirvdna  of  im- 
potence, —  this  is  not  life ;  it  is  not  consciousness ;  it  is  not 
happiness.  So  far  as  we  can  grasp  the  hypothesis,  it  seems 
equally  ludicrous  and  repulsive.  You  may  call  it  paradise; 
but  we  call  it  conscious  annihilation.  You  may  long  for  it, 
if  you  have  been  so  taught ;  just  as  if  you  had  been  taught  to 
cherish  such  hopes,  you  might  be  now  yearning  for  the  mo- 
ment when  you  might  become  the  immaterial  principle  of  a 
comet,  or  as  you  might  tell  me,  that  you  really  were  the  ether, 
and  were  about  to  take  your  place  in  Space. 

This  is  how  these  sublimities  affect  us.  But  we  know  that 
to  many  this  future  is  one  of  spiritual  development,  a  life 


224  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

of  growth  and  continual  upsoaring  of  still  higher  afifection. 
It  may  be  so;  but  to  our  mind  these  are  contradictions  in 
terms.  We  cannot  understand  what  life  and  affection  can 
mean,  where  you  postulate  the  absence  of  every  condition  by 
which  life  and  affection  are  possible.  Can  there  be  develop- 
ment where  there  is  no  law,  thought  or  affection  where  object 
and  subject  are  confused  into  one  essence?  How  can  that 
be  existence,  where  everything  of  which  we  have  experience, 
and  everything  which  we  can  define,  is  presumed  to  be  unable 
to  enter  ?  Besides,  this  is  not  the  orthodox,  not  the  popular 
view.  To  us  these  things  are  all  incoherences;  and  in  the 
midst  of  practical  realities  and  the  solid  duties  of  life,  sheer 
impertinences.  The  field  is  full ;  each  human  life  has  a  per- 
fectly real  and  a  vast  future  to  look  forward  to ;  these  hyper- 
bolic senigmas  disturb  our  grave  duties  and  our  solid  hopes. 
No  wonder,  then,  whilst  they  are  still  so  rife,  that  men  are 
dull  to  the  moral  responsibility  which,  in  its  awfulness,  begins 
only  at  the  grave;  that  they  are  so  little  influenced  by  the 
futurity  which  will  judge  them;  that  they  are  blind  to  the 
dignity  and  beauty  of  death,  and  shuffle  off  the  dead  life  and 
the  dead  body  with  such  cruel  disrespect.  The  fumes  of  the 
celestial  immortality  still  confuse  them. 

It  is  only  when  an  earthly  future  is  the  fulfilment  of  a  worthy 
life  on  earth,  that  we  can  see  all  the  majesty  as  well  as'  the 
glory  of  the  world  beyond  the  grave ;  and  then  only  will  it 
fulfil  its  moral  and  religious  purpose  as  the  great  guide  of 
human  conduct. 


XV 

REPLY    TO    CRITICISMS 

See  the  Introductory  Note  to  Essay  XIII 

Whether  the  preceding  discussion  has  given  much  new 
strength  to  the  doctrine  of  man's  immaterial  Soul  and  Future 
existence  I  will  not  pretend  to  decide.  But  I  cannot  feel  that 
it  has  shaken  the  reality  of  man's  posthumous  influence,  my 
chief  and  immediate  theme.  It  seemed  to  me  that  the  time 
had  come,  when,  seeing  how  vague  and  hesitating  were  the 
prevalent  beliefs  on  this  subject,  it  was  most  important  to 
remember  that,  from  a  purely  earthly  point  of  view,  man  had 
a  spiritual  nature,  and  could  look  forward  after  death  to  some- 
thing that  marked  him  off  from  the  beasts  that  perish.  I 
cannot  see  that  what  I  urged  has  been  in  substance  displaced ; 
though  much  criticism  (and  some  of  it  of  a  verbal  kind) 
has  been  directed  at  the  language  which  I  used  of  others. 
My  object  was  to  try  if  this  life  could  not  be  made  richer; 
not  to  destroy  the  dreams  of  another.  But  has  the  old  doc- 
trine of  a  future  life  been  in  any  way  strengthened?  Mr. 
Hutton,  it  is  true,  has  a  "personal  wish"  for  a  perpetuity  of 
volition.  Lord  Blachford  "believes  because  he  is  told"  in 
Holy  Writ.  And  Professor  Huxley  knows  of  no  evidence  that 
"such  a  soul  and  a  future  life  exist";  and  he  seems  not  to 
believe  in  them  at  all. 

Philosophical  discussion  must  languish  a  little,  if,  when  we 
ask  for  the  philosophical  grounds  for  a  certain  belief,  we  find 
one  philosopher  bclic\ing  because  he  has  a  "personal  wish" 
Q  225 


226  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON  SENSE 

for  it,  and  another  "believing  because  he  is  told."  Mr.  Hutton 
says  that,  as  far  as  he  knows,  "the  thoughts,  affections,  and 
volitions  are  not  likely  to  perish  with  his  body."  Professor 
Huxley  seems  to  think  it  just  as  likely  that  they  should.  Ar- 
guments are  called  for  to  enable  us  to  decide  between  these 
two  authorities.  And  the  only  argument  we  have  hitherto 
got  is  Mr.  Hutton's  "personal  wish,"  and  Lord  Blachford's 
ita  scriptum  est.  I  confess  myself  unable  to  continue  an  argu- 
ment which  runs  into  believing  "because  I  am  told."  It  is 
for  this  reason  that  the  lazzarone  at  Naples  believes  in  the 
blood  of  St.  Januarius. 

My  original  propositions  may  be  stated  thus. 

1.  Philosophy  as  a  whole  (I  do  not  say  specially  biological 
science)  has  established  a  functional  relation  to  exist  between 
ever}'  fact  of  thinking,  willing,  or  feeling,  on  the  one  side,  and 
some  molecular  change  in  the  body  on  the  other  side. 

2.  This  relation  is  simply  one  of  correspondence  between 
moral  and  physical  facts,  not  one  of  assimilation.  The 
moral  fact  does  not  become  a  physical  fact,  is  not  adequately 
explained  by  it,  and  must  be  mainly  studied  as  a  moral  fact, 
by  methods  applicable  to  morals  ^  not  as  a  physical  fact, 
by  methods  applicable  to  physics. 

3.  The  moral  facts  of  human  life,  the  laws  of  man's 
mental,  moral,  and  affective  nature,  must  consequently  be 
studied,  as  they  have  always  been  studied,  by  direct  ob- 
servation of  these  facts ;  yet  the  correspondences,  specially 
discovered  bv  biological  science  between  man's  mind  and 
his  body,  must  always  be  kept  in  view.  They  are  an  in- 
dispensable, inseparable,  but  subordinate  part  of  moral 
philosophy. 

4.  We  do  not  diminish  the  supreme  place  of  the  spiritual 
facts  in  life  and  in  philosophy  by  admitting  these  spiritual 
facts  to  have  a  relation  with  molecular  and  organic  facts 


REPLY  TO    CRITICISMS  22/ 

in  the  human  organism  —  provided  that  we  never  forget 
how  small  and  dependent  is  the  part  which  the  study  of 
the  molecular  and  organic  phenomena  must  play  in  moral 
and  social  science. 

5.  Those  whose  minds  have  been  trained  in  the  modern 
philosophy  of  universal  Law  cannot  understand  what  is 
meant  by  sensation,  thought,  and  energy,  existing  without 
any  basis  of  molecular  change ;  and  to  talk  to  them  of  sen- 
sation, thought,  and  energy,  continuing  in  the  absence  of  any 
molecules  whatever,  is  precisely  such  a  contradiction  in 
terms  as  to  suppose  that  civilisation  will  continue  in  the 
absence  of  any  men  whatever. 

6.  Yet  man  is  so  constituted  as  a  social  being,  that  the 
energies  which  he  puts  out  in  life  mould  the  minds,  characters, 
and  habits  of  his  fellow-men ;  so  that  each  man's  life  is, 
in  effect,  indefinitely  prolonged  in  human  society.  This  is 
a  phenomenon  quite  peculiar  to  man  and  to  human  society, 
and  of  course  depends  on  there  being  men  in  active  associa- 
tion with  each  other.  Physics  and  biolog}-  can  teach  us 
nothing  about  it ;  and  physicists  and  biologists  may  verj^ 
easily  forget  its  importance.  It  can  be  learnt  only  by  long 
and  refined  observations  in  moral  and  mental  philosophy  as 
a  whole,  and  in  the  histor}-  of  civilisation  as  a  whole. 

7.  Lastly,  as  a  corollary,  it  may  be  useful  to  retain  the 
words  Soul  and  Future  Life  for  their  associations ;  provided 
we  make  it  clear  that  we  mean  by  Soul  the  combined  facul- 
ties of  the  living  organism,  and  by  future  life  the  subjective 
eflect  of  each  man's  objective  life  on  the  actual  lives  of  his 
fellow-men. 

I.  Now  I  find  in  Mr.  Hutton's  paper  hardly  any  attempt 
to  disprove  the  first  six  of  these  propositions.  He  is  employed 
for  the  most  part  in  asserting  that  his  hypothesis  of  a  future 
state  is  a  more  agreeable  one  than  mine,  and  in  earnest 


228  PHILOSOPHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

complaints  that  I  should  call  his  view  of  a  future  state  a 
selfish  or  personal  hope.  As  to  the  first,  I  will  only  remark 
that  it  is  scarcely  a  question  whether  his  notion  of  immor- 
tality is  beautiful  or  not,  but  whether  it  is  true.  If  there  is 
no  rational  ground  for  expecting  such  immortality  to  be  a 
solid  fact,  it  is  to  little  purpose  to  show  us  what  a  sublime 
idea  it  would  be  if  there  were  anything  in  it.  As  to  the 
second,  I  will  only  say  that  I  do  not  call  his  notion  of  a  future 
existence  a  selfish  or  personal  hope.  In  the  last  paragraph 
of  my  second  paper  I  speak  with  respect  of  the  opinion  of 
those  who  look  forward  to  a  future  of  moral  development  in- 
stead of  to  an  idle  eternity  of  psalm-singing.  My  language  as 
to  the  selfishness  of  the  vulgar  ideas  of  salvation  was  directed 
to  those  who  insist  that  unless  they  are  to  feel  a  continuance 
of  pleasure  they  do  not  care  for  any  continuance  of  their  in- 
fluence at  all.  The  vulgar  are  apt  to  say  that  what  they 
desire  is  the  sense  of  personal  satisfaction,  and  if  they  cannot 
have  this  they  care  for  nothing  else.  This,  I  maintain,  is 
a  selfish  and  debasing  idea.  It  is  the  common  notion  of  the 
popular  religion,  and  its  tendency  to  concentrate  the  mind 
on  a  merely  personal  salvation  does  exert  an  evil  effect  on 
practical  conduct.  I  once  heard  a  Scotch  preacher,  dilating 
on  the  narrowness  of  the  gate,  etc.,  exclaim,  "  O  dear  brethren, 
who  would  care  to  be  saved  in  a  crowd  V 

I  do  not  say  this  of  the  life  of  grander  activity  in  which 
Mr.  Hutton  believes,  and  which  Lord  Blachford  so  elo- 
quently describes.  This  is  no  doubt  a  fine  ideal,  and  I  will 
not  say  other  than  an  elevating  hope.  But  on  what  does  it 
rest?  Why  this  ideal  rather  than  any  other?  Each  of  us 
may  imagine,  as  I  said  at  the  outset,  his  own  Elysian  fields, 
or  his  own  mystic  rose.  But  is  this  philosophy  ?  Is  it  even 
religion?  Besides,  there  is  this  other  objection  to  it.  It  is 
not  Christianity,  but  Neo-Christianity.     It  is  a  fantasia  with 


REPLY  TO  CRITICISMS  229 

variations  on  the  orthodox  creed.  There  is  not  a  word 
of  the  kind  in  the  Bible.  Lord  Blachford  says  he  believes 
in  it,  "because  he  is  told."  He  admits  that  natural  phi- 
losophy gives  him  no  evidence  at  all  of  future  life.  But  it 
so  happens  that  he  is  not  told  this,  at  any  rate  in  the  creeds 
and  formularies  of  orthodox  faith.  If  this  view  of  future 
life  is  to  rest  entirely  on  revelation,  it  is  a  very  singular  thing 
that  the  Bible  is  silent  on  the  matter.  Whatever  kind  of 
future  ecstasy  may  be  suggested  in  some  texts,  certain  it  is 
that  such  a  glorified  energy  as  Lord  Blachford  paints  in 
glowing  colours  is  nowhere  described  in  the  Bible.  There  is 
a  constant  practice  nowadays,  when  the  popular  religion  is 
criticised,  that  earnest  defenders  of  it  come  forward  exclaim- 
ing: "Oh!  that  is  only  the  vulgar  notion  of  our  religion. 
My  idea  of  the  doctrine  is  so  and  so"  —  something  which 
the  speaker  has  invented  without  countenance  from  official 
authority.  For  my  part,  I  hold  Christianity  to  be  what  is 
taught  in  average  churches  and  chapels  to  the  millions  of 
professing  Christians.  And  I  say  it  is  a  ver>'  serious  fact 
when  philosophical  defenders  of  religion  begin  by  repudiating 
that  which  is  taught  in  average  pulpits,  and  tell  the  world  that 
Christianity  really  means  —  something  the  speaker  has  just 
devised  himself. 

Perhaps  a  little  more  attention  to  my  actual  words  might 
have  rendered  unnecessary  the  complaints  in  all  these  papers 
as  to  my  language  about  the  hopes  which  men  cherish  for  the 
future.  In  the  first  place,  I  freely  admit  that  the  hopes  of  a 
grander  energy  in  heaven  are  not  open  to  the  charge  of  vulgar 
selfishness.  I  said  that  they  arc  unintelligible,  not  that  they 
are  unworthy.  They  are  unintelligible  to  those  who  are 
continually  alive  to  the  fact  I  have  placed  as  my  first  propo- 
sition —  that  every  moral  phenomenon  is  in  functional  rela- 
tion with  some  physical  phenomenon.     To  those  who  deny 


230  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

or  ignore  this  truth,  there  is  doubtless  no  incoherence  in  all 
the  ideals  so  eloquently  described  in  the  papers  of  Mr.  Hutton 
and  Lord  Blachford.  But  once  get  this  conception  as  the 
substratum  of  your  entire  mental  and  moral  philosophy, 
and  it  is  as  incoherent  to  talk  to  us  of  your  immaterial  develop- 
ment as  it  would  be  to  talk  of  obtaining  redness  without  any 
red  thing. 

I  will  try  to  explain  more  fully  why  this  idea  of  a  glorified 
activity  implies  a  contradiction  in  terms  to  those  who  are 
imbued  with  the  sense  of  correspondence  between  physical 
and  moral  facts.  When  we  conceive  any  process  of  thinking, 
we  call  up  before  us  a  complex  train  of  conditions ;  objective 
facts  outside  of  us  or  the  revived  impression  of  such  facts; 
the  molecular  effect  of  these  facts  upon  certain  parts  of  our 
organism,  the  association  of  these  with  similar  facts  recalled 
by  memory,  an  elaborate  mechanism  to  correlate  these  im- 
pressions, an  unknown  to  be  made  known,  and  a  difficulty 
to  be  overcome.  All  systematic  thought  implies  relations 
with  the  external  world  present  or  recalled,  and  it  also  implies 
some  shortcoming  in  our  powers  of  perfecting  those  relations. 
When  we  meditate,  it  is  on  a  basis  of  facts  which  we  are  ob- 
serving, or  have  observed  and  are  now  recalling,  and  with 
a  view  to  get  at  some  result  which  baffles  our  direct  obser- 
vation and  hinders  some  practical  purpose. 

The  same  holds  good  of  our  moral  energy.  Ecstasy  and 
mere  adoration  exclude  energy  of  action.  Moral  develop- 
ment implies  difficulties  to  be  overcome,  qualities  balanced 
against  one  another  under  opposing  conditions,  this  or  that 
appetite  tempted,  this  or  that  instinct  tested  by  proof.  Moral 
development  does  not  grow  like  a  fungus;  it  is  a  continual 
struggle  in  surrounding  conditions  of  a  specific  kind,  and 
an  active  putting  forth  of  a  variety  of  practical  faculties  in 
the  midst  of  real  obstacles. 


REPLY  TO  CRITICISMS 


231 


So,  too,  of  the  affections,  they  equally  imply  conditions. 
Sympathy  does  not  spurt  up  like  a  fountain  in  the  air;  it 
implies  beings  in  need  of  help,  evils  to  be  alleviated,  a  fellow- 
ship of  giving  and  taking,  the  sense  of  protecting  and  being 
protected,  a  pity  for  suffering,  an  admiration  of  power,  good- 
ness, and  truth.  All  of  these  imply  an  external  world  to  act 
in,  human  beings  as  objects,  and  human  life  under  human 
conditions. 

Now  all  these  conditions  are  eliminated  from  the  orthodox 
ideal  of  a  future  state.  There  are  to  be  no  physical  impres- 
sions, no  material  difficulties,  no  evil,  no  toil,  no  struggle, 
no  human  beings  and  no  human  objects.  The  only  con- 
dition is  a  complete  absence  of  all  conditions,  or  all  conditions 
of  which  we  have  any  experience.  And  we  say,  we  cannot 
imagine  what  you  mean  by  your  intensified  sympathy,  your 
broader  thought,  your  infinitely  varied  activity,  when  you 
begin  by  postulating  the  absence  of  all  that  makes  sympathy, 
thought,  and  activity  possible,  all  that  makes  life  really 
noble. 

A  mystical  and  inane  ecstasy  is  an  appropriate  ideal  for 
this  paradise  of  negations,  and  this  is  the  orthodox  view; 
but  it  is  not  a  high  view.  A  glorified  existence  of  greater 
activity  and  development  may  be  a  high  view,  but  it  is  a  con- 
tradiction in  terms;  exactly,  I  say,  as  if  you  were  to  talk 
of  a  higher  civilisation  without  any  human  beings.  But 
this  is  simply  a  metaphysical  afterthought  to  escape  from 
a  moral  dilemma.  Mr.  Hutton  is  surely  mistaken  in  saying 
that  Positivists  have  forgotten  that  Christians  ever  had  any 
meaning  in  their  hopes  of  a  "beatific  vision."  He  must 
know  that  Dante  and  Thomas  k  Kempis  form  the  religious 
books  of  Positivists,  and  they  are,  with  some  other  manuals 
of  Catholic  theology,  amongst  the  small  number  of  volumes 
which  Comte  recommended  for  constant  use.     We  can  see 


232  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

in  the  celestial  "visions"  of  a  mystical  and  unscientific  age 
much  that  was  beautiful  in  its  time,  though  not  the  highest 
product  even  of  theology.  But  in  our  day  these  visions  of 
paradise  have  lost  w^hat  moral  value  they  had,  w^hilst  the 
progress  of  philosophy  has  made  them  incompatible  with  our 
modern  canons  of  thought. 

Mr.  Hutton  supposes  me  to  object  to  any  continuance  of 
sensation  as  an  evil  in  itself.  My  objection  was  not  that 
consciousness  should  be  prolonged  in  immortality,  but  that 
nothing  else  but  consciousness  should  be  prolonged.  All 
real  human  life,  energy,  thought,  and  active  affection,  are 
to  be  made  impossible  in  your  celestial  paradise,  but  you 
insist  on  retaining  consciousness.  To  retain  the  power  of 
feeling,  whilst  all  means  and  object  are  taken  away  from 
thinking,  all  power  of  acting,  all  opportunity  of  cultivating 
the  faculties  of  sympathy  are  stifled  :  this  seems  to  me  some- 
thing else  than  a  good.  It  would  seem  to  me,  that  simply 
to  be  conscious,  and  yet  to  lie  thoughtless,  inactive,  irre- 
sponsive, with  every  faculty  of  a  man  paralysed  within  you, 
as  if  by  that  villanous  drug  which  produces  torpor  whilst  it 
intensifies  sensation :  such  a  consciousness  as  this  must  be 
a  very  place  of  torment. 

I  think  some  contradictions  which  Mr.  Hutton  supposes 
he  detects  in  my  paper  are  not  very  hard  to  reconcile.  I 
admitted  that  Death  is  an  evil,  it  seems ;  but  I  spoke  of  our 
posthumous  activity  as  a  higher  kind  of  influence.  We  might 
imagine,  of  course,  a  Utopia,  with  neither  suffering,  waste, 
nor  loss ;  and  compared  with  such  a  world,  the  world,  as  we 
know  it,  is  full  of  evils,  of  which  Death  is  obviously  one. 
But  relatively,  in  such  a  world  as  alone  we  know,  Death 
becomes  simply  a  law  of  organised  nature,  from  which  we 
draw  some  of  our  guiding  motives  of  conduct.  In  precisely 
the  same  way  the  necessity  of  toil  is  an  evil  in  itself;   but, 


REPLY  TO   CRITICISMS  233 

with  man  and  his  life  as  we  know  them,  we  draw  from  it  some 
of  our  highest  moral  energies.  The  grandest  qualities  of 
human  nature,  such  as  we  know  it  at  least,  would  become 
forever  impossible,  if  Labour  and  Death  were  not  the  law 
of  life. 

Mr,  Hutton  again  takes  but  a  pessimist  view  of  life  when 
he  insists  how  much  of  our  activity  is  evil,  and  how  ques- 
tionable is  the  future  of  the  race.  I  am  no  pessimist,  and  I 
believe  in  a  providential  control  over  all  human  actions  by 
the  great  Power  of  Humanity,  which  indeed  brings  good  out 
of  evil,  and  assures,  at  least  for  some  thousands  of  centuries, 
a  certain  progress  towards  the  higher  state.  Pessimism 
as  to  the  essential  dignity  of  man  and  the  steady  develop- 
ment of  his  race,  is  one  of  the  surest  marks  of  the  enervating 
influence  of  this  dream  of  a  celestial  glory.  If  I  called  it  as 
wild  a  desire  as  to  go  roving  through  space  in  a  comet,  it  is 
because  I  can  attach  no  meaning  to  a  human  life  to  be  pro- 
longed without  a  human  frame  and  a  human  world ;  and  it 
seems  to  me  as  rational  to  talk  of  becoming  an  angel  as  to 
talk  of  becoming  an  ellipse. 

By  "duties"  of  the  world  beyond  the  grave,  I  meant  the 
duties  which  are  imposed  on  us  in  life,  by  the  certainty  that 
our  action  must  continue  to  have  an  indefinite  effect.  The 
phrase  may  be  inelegant,  but  I  do  not  think  the  meaning  is 
obscure. 

II.  I  cannot  agree  with  Lord  Blachford  that  I  have  fallen 
into  any  confusion  between  a  substance  and  an  attribute. 
I  am  quite  aware  that  the  word  Soul  has  been  hitherto  used 
for  some  centuries  as  an  entity.  And  I  proposed  to  retain 
the  term  for  an  attribute.  It  is  a  very  common  process  in  the 
histor)'  of  thought.  Electricity,  Life,  Heat,  were  once  sup- 
posed to  be  substances.  We  now  very  usefully  retain  these 
words  for  a  set  of  observed  conditions  or  cjualitics. 


234  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

I  agree  with  Mr.  Spencer  that  the  unity  of  the  social  or- 
ganism is  quite  as  complete  as  that  of  the  individual  organism. 
I  do  not  confuse  the  two  kinds  of  unity ;  but  I  say  that  man 
is  in  no  important  sense  a  unit  that  society  is  not  also  a  unit. 

With  regard  to  the  "percipient"  and  the  "perceptible" 
I  cannot  follow  Lord  Blachford.  He  speaks  a  tongue  that 
I  do  not  understand.  I  have  no  means  of  dividing  the 
universe  into  "percipients"  and  " percept ibles."  I  know  no 
reason  why  a  "percipient"  should  not  be  a  "perceptible," 
none  why  I  should  not  be  "perceptible,"  and  none  why 
beings  about  me  should  not  be  "perceptible."  I  think  we 
are  all  perfectly  "perceptible"  —  indeed  some  of  us  are  more 
"perceptible"  than  "percipient"  —  though  I  cannot  say 
that  Lord  Blachford  is  always  "perceptible"  to  me.  And 
how  does  my  being  "perceptible,"  or  not  being  "perceptible," 
prove  that  I  have  an  immortal  soul  ?  Is  a  dog  "perceptible," 
is  he  "percipient"?  Has  he  not  some  of  the  qualities  of  a 
"percipient,"  and  if  so,  has  he  an  immortal  soul?  Is  an 
ant,  a  tree,  a  bacterium,  percipient,  and  has  any  of  these  an 
immortal  soul  ?  for  I  find  Lord  Blachford  declaring  there  is 
an  "ineradicable  difference  between  the  motions  of  a  ma- 
terial and  the  sensations  of  a  living  being,"  as  if  the  animal 
world  were  percipient,  and  the  inorganic  perceptible.  But 
surely  in  the  sensations  of  a  living  being  the  animal  world 
must  be  included.  Where  does  the  vegetable  world  come 
in? 

I  used  the  word  "organism"  advisedly  when  I  said  that 
will,  thought,  and  affection  are  functions  of  a  living  organ- 
ism. I  decline  exactly  to  localise  the  organ  of  any  function 
of  mind  or  will.  When  I  am  asked,  What  are  we  ?  I  reply 
we  are  men.  When  I  am  asked.  Are  we  our  bodies?  I  say 
no,  nor  are  we  our  minds.  Have  we  no  sense  of  personality, 
of  unity?    I  am  asked.     I  say,  Certainly;  it  is  an  acquired 


REPLY   TO   CRITICISMS  235 

result  of  our  nervous  organisation,  liable  to  be  interrupted 
by  derangements  of  that  nervous  organisation.  What  is  it 
that  makes  us  think  and  feel?  The  facts  of  our  human 
nature;  I  cannot  get  behind  this,  and  I  need  no  further 
explanation.  We  are  men,  and  can  do  what  men  can  do. 
I  say  the  tangible  collection  of  organs  known  as  a  "man" 
(not  the  consensus  or  the  condition,  but  the  man)  thinks, 
wills,  and  feels,  just  as  much  as  that  visible  organism  lives 
and  grows.  We  do  not  say  that  this  or  that  ganglion  in  par- 
ticular lives  and  grows ;  we  say  the  man  grows.  It  is  as  easy 
to  me  to  imagine  that  we  shall  grow  fifteen  feet  high,  when 
we  have  no  body,  as  that  we  shall  grow  in  knowledge,  good- 
ness, activity,  etc.,  etc.,  etc.,  when  we  have  no  organs.  And 
the  absence  of  all  molecular  attributes  would  be,  I  should 
think,  particularly  awkward  in  that  life  of  cometary  motion 
in  the  interstellar  spaces  with  which  Lord  Blachford  threatens 
us.     But  as  the  poet  says :  — 

Trasumanar  significar  per  verba 
Non  si  porria  — 

"//,"  says  he,  "practical  duties  are  necessary  for  the  per- 
fection of  life,"  we  can  take  a  little  interstellar  exercise. 
Why,  practical  duties  arc  the  sum  and  substance  of  life; 
and  life  which  does  not  centre  in  practical  duties  is  not  Life, 
but  a  trance. 

Lord  Blachford,  who  is  somewhat  punctilious  in  terms, 
asks  me  what  I  consider  myself  to  understand  "by  the  in- 
corporation of  a  consensus  of  faculties  with  a  glorious  future." 
Well !  it  so  happens  that  I  did  not  use  that  phrase.  I  have 
never  spoken  of  an  immortal  Soul  anywhere,  nor  do  I  use 
the  word  Soul  of  any  but  the  living  man.  I  said  a  man 
might  look  forward  to  incorporation  with  the  future  of  his 
race,  explaining  that  to  mean  his  "posthumous  activity." 


236  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

And  I  think  at  any  rate  the  phrase  is  quite  as  reasonable  as 
to  say  that  I  look  forward,  as  Mr.  Hutton  does,  to  a  "union 
with  God."  What  does  Mr.  Hutton,  or  Lord  Blachford, 
understand  himself  to  mean  by  that? 

Surely  Lord  Blachford's  epigram  about  the  fiddle  and  the 
tune  is  hardly  fortunate.  Indeed,  that  exactly  expresses 
what  I  find  faulty  in  the  view  of  himself  and  the  theologians. 
He  thinks  the  tune  will  go  on  playing  when  the  fiddle  is  broken 
up  and  burned.  I  say  nothing  of  the  kind.  I  do  not  say 
the  man  will  continue  to  exist  after  death.  I  simply  say 
that  his  influence  will;  that  other  men  will  do  and  think 
what  he  taught  them  to  do  or  to  think.  Just  so,  a  general 
would  be  said  to  win  a  battle  which  he  planned  and  directed, 
even  if  he  had  been  killed  in  an  early  part  of  it.  What  is 
there  of  fiddle  and  tune  about  this?  I  certainly  think  that 
when  Mozart  and  Beethoven  have  left  us  great  pieces  of 
music,  it  signifies  little  to  art  if  the  actual  fiddle  or  even  the 
actual  composer  continue  to  exist  or  not.  I  never  said  the 
tune  would  exist.  I  said  that  men  would  remember  it  and 
repeat  it.  I  must  thank  Lord  Blachford  for  a  happy  illus- 
tration of  my  own  meaning.  But  it  is  he  who  expects  the 
tune  to  exist  without  the  fiddle.  /  say,  you  can't  have  a  tune 
without  a  fiddle,  nor  a  fiddle  without  wood. 

HI.  I  have  reserved  the  criticism  of  Professor  Huxley,  be- 
cause it  lies  apart  from  the  principal  discussion,  and  turns 
mainly  on  some  incidental  remarks  of  mine  on  "biological 
reasoning  about  spiritual  things." 

I  note  three  points  at  the  outset.  Professor  Huxley  does 
not  himself  pretend  to  any  evidence  for  a  theological  soul 
and  future  life.  Again,  he  does  not  dispute  the  account  I 
give  of  the  functional  relation  of  physical  and  moral  facts. 
He  seems  surprised  that  I  should  understand  it,  not  being  a 
biologist;   but  he  is  kind  enough  to  say  that  my  statement 


REPLY  TO   CRITICISMS  237 

may  pass.  Lastly,  he  does  not  deny  the  reality  of  man's 
posthumous  activity.  Now  these  three  are  the  main  purposes 
of  my  argument ;  and  in  these  I  have  Professor  Huxley  with 
me.  He  is  no  more  of  a  theologian  than  I  am.  Indeed,  he 
is  only  scandalised  that  I  should  see  any  good  in  priests  at 
all.  He  might  have  said  more  plainly  that,  when  the  man 
is  dead,  there  is  an  end  of  the  matter.  But  this  clearly  is 
his  opinion,  and  he  intimates  as  much  in  his  paper.  Only 
he  would  say  no  more  about  it,  bury  the  carcase,  and  end 
the  tale,  leaving  all  thoughts  about  the  future  to  those  whose 
faith  is  more  robust  and  whose  hopes  are  richer ;  by  w^hich  I 
understand  him  to  mean  persons  weak  enough  to  Hsten  to  the 
priests. 

Now  this  does  not  satisfy  me.  I  call  it  materialism,  for  it 
exaggerates  the  importance  of  the  physical  facts,  and  ignores 
that  of  the  spiritual  facts.  And  the  object  of  my  paper  was 
simply  this :  that  as  the  physical  facts  are  daily  growing 
quite  irresistible,  it  is  of  urgent  importance  to  place  the 
spiritual  facts  on  a  sound  scientific  basis  at  once.  Professor 
Huxley  implies  that  his  business  is  with  the  physical  facts, 
and  the  spiritual  facts  must  take  care  of  themselves.  I  can- 
not agree  with  him.  That  is  precisely  the  difference  between 
us.  The  spiritual  facts  of  man's  nature  are  the  business  of 
all  who  undertake  to  denounce  priestcraft,  and  especially  of 
those  who  preach  Lay  Sermons. 

Professor  Huxley  complains  that  I  should  join  in  the  view- 
halloo  against  biological  science.  Now  I  never  have  sup- 
posed that  biological  science  was  in  the  position  of  the  hunted 
fox.  I  thought  it  was  the  hunter,  booted  and  spurred  and 
riding  over  us  all,  with  Professor  Huxley  leaping  the  most 
terrific  fences  and  cracking  his  whip  with  intense  gusto.  As 
to  biological  science,  it  is  the  last  thing  that  I  should  try  to 
run  down;    and  I  must  protest,  with  all  sincerity,  that  I 


238  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

wrote  without  a  thought  of  Professor  Huxley  at  all.  He 
insists  on  knowing,  in  the  most  peremptory  way,  of  whom  I 
was  thinking,  as  if  I  were  thinking  of  him.  Of  whom  else 
could  I  be  thinking,  forsooth,  when  I  spoke  of  Biology? 
Well !  I  did  not  bite  my  thumb  at  him,  but  I  bit  my  thumb. 

Seriously,  I  was  not  writing  at  Professor  Huxley,  or  I 
should  have  named  him,  I  have  a  very  great  admiration 
for  his  work  in  biology;  I  have  learned  much  from  him;  I 
have  followed  his  courses  of  lectures  years  and  years  ago, 
and  have  carefully  studied  his  books.  If,  in  questions  which 
belong  to  sociology,  morals,  and  to  general  philosophy,  he 
seems  to  me  hardly  an  authority,  why  need  we  dispute? 
Dog  should  not  bite  dog;  and  he  and  I  have  many  a  wolf 
that  we  both  would  keep  from  the  fold. 

But  if  I  did  not  mean  Professor  Huxley,  whom  did  I 
mean?  Now  my  paper,  I  think  clearly  enough,  alluded  to 
two  very  different  kinds  of  Materialism,  There  is  systematic 
Materialism,  and  there  is  the  vague  Materialism,  The  emi- 
nent example  of  the  first  is  the  unlucky  remark  of  Cabanis 
that  the  brain  secretes  thought,  as  the  liver  secretes  bile ;  and 
there  is  much  of  the  same  sort  in  many  foreign  theories  —  in 
the  tone  of  Moleschott,  Buchner,  and  the  like.  The  most 
distinct  examples  of  it  in  this  country  are  found  amongst 
phrenologists,  spirituahsts,  some  mental  pathologists,  and  a 
few  communist  visionaries.  The  far  wider,  vaguer,  and  more 
dangerous  school  of  Materialism  is  found  in  a  multitude  of 
quarters  —  in  all  those  who  insist  exclusively  on  the  physical 
side  of  moral  phenomena  —  all,  in  short,  who,  to  use  Pro- 
fessor Huxley's  phrase,  are  employed  in  "building  up  a 
physical  theory  of  moral  phenomena."  Those  who  confuse 
moral  and  physical  phenomena  are  indeed  few.  Those  who 
exaggerate  the  physical  side  of  moral  phenomena  are  many. 

Now,  though  I  did  not  allude  to  Professor  Huxley  in  what 


REPLY  TO   CRITiaSMS  239 

I  wrote,  his  criticism  convinces  me  that  he  is  sometimes  at 
least  found  among  these  last.  His  paper  is  an  excellent 
illustration  of  the  very  error  which  I  condemned.  The 
issue  between  us  is  this :  —  We  both  agree  that  every  mental 
and  moral  fact  is  in  functional  relation  with  some  molecular 
fact.  So  far  we  are  entirely  on  the  same  side,  as  against  all 
forms  of  theological  and  metaphysical  doctrine  which  con- 
ceive the  possibihty  of  human  feeling  without  a  human  body. 
But  then,  says  Professor  Huxley,  if  I  can  trace  the  molecular 
facts  which  are  the  antecedents  of  the  mental  and  moral 
facts,  I  have  explained  these  mental  and  moral  facts.  That 
I  deny;  just  as  much  as  I  should  deny  that  a  chemical  analy- 
sis of  the  body  could  ever  lead  to  an  explanation  of  the 
physical  organism. 

Then,  says  the  Professor,  when  I  have  traced  out  the 
molecular  facts,  I  have  built  up  a  physical  theory  of  moral 
phenomena.  That  again  I  deny.  I  say  there  is  no  such 
thing,  or  no  rational  thing,  that  can  be  called  a  physical 
theory  of  moral  phenomena ;  any  more  than  there  is  a  moral 
theory  of  physical  phenomena.  What  sort  of  a  thing  would 
be  a  physical  theory  of  history  —  history  explained  by  the 
influence  of  climate  or  the  like?  The  issue  between  us 
centres  in  this.  I  say  that  the  physical  side  of  moral  phe- 
nomena bears  about  the  same  part  in  the  moral  sciences  that 
the  facts  about  chmate  bear  in  the  sum  of  human  civilisation. 
And,  that  to  look  to  the  physical  facts  as  an  explanation  of 
the  moral,  or  even  as  an  independent  branch  of  the  study  of 
moral  facts,  is  perfectly  idle;  just  as  it  would  be  if  a  mere 
physical  geographer  pretended  to  give  us,  out  of  his  geog- 
raphy, a  climatic  philosophy  of  history. 

Again,  Professor  Huxley  has  not  been  deterred  from  the 
astounding  paradox  of  proposing  to  us  a  physiolof^ical  theory 
of  religion.     He  tells  us  how  "the  religious  feelings  may  be 


240  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

brought  within  the  range  of  physiological  inquiry,"  And  he 
proposes  as  a  problem  —  "What  diseased  viscus  may  have 
been  responsible  for  the  'Priest  in  Absolution^  ?"  I  will  drop 
all  epithets;  but  I  must  say  that  I  call  that  materialism, 
and  materialism  not  very  nice  of  its  kind.  One  might  as 
reasonably  propose  as  a  problem  —  What  barometrical  read- 
ings are  responsible  for  the  British  Constitution?  and  sug- 
gest a  congress  of  meteorologists  to  do  the  work  of  Hallam, 
Stubbs,  and  Freeman.  No  doubt  there  is  some  connection 
between  the  House  of  Commons  and  the  English  climate, 
and  so  there  is  no  doubt  some  connection  between  religious 
theories  and  physical  organs.  But  to  talk  of  "bringing  reli- 
gion within  the  range  of  physiological  inquiry"  is  simply  to 
stare  through  the  wrong  end  of  the  telescope,  and  to  turn 
philosophy  and  science  upside  down.  Ah !  Professor  Hux- 
ley, this  is  a  bad  day's  work  for  scientific  progress  — 

rj  K€v  yrjO-^aaL  Jlpiafio^,  IIpta/Aoto  tc  Tratoes. 

Pope  Pius  and  his  people  will  be  glad  when  they  read  that 
fatal  sentence  of  yours.  When  I  complained  of  "the  attempt 
to  dispose  of  the  deepest  moral  truths  of  human  nature  on  a 
bare  physical  or  physiological  basis,"  I  could  not  have  ex- 
pected to  read  such  an  illustration  of  my  meaning  by  Professor 
Huxley. 

Perhaps  he  will  permit  me  to  inform  him  (since  that  is 
the  style  which  he  affects)  that  there  once  was  —  and  indeed 
we  may  say  still  is  —  an  institution  called  the  Cathohc 
Church;  that  it  has  had  a  long  and  strange  history,  and 
subtle  influences  of  all  kinds;  and  I  venture  to  think  that 
Professor  Huxley  may  learn  more  about  the  Priest  in  Absolu- 
tion by  a  few  weeks'  study  of  the  Catholic  system  than  by 
inspecting  the  diseased  viscera  of  the  whole  human  race. 
When   Professor   Huxley's   historical  and   religious   studies 


REPLY  TO   CRITICISMS  24 1 

"have  advanced  so  far  as  to  enable  him  to  explain"  the  his- 
tory of  Catholicism,  I  think  he  will  admit  that  "Priestcraft" 
cannot  well  be  made  a  chapter  in  a  physiological  manual. 
It  may  be  cheap  pulpit  thunder,  but  this  idea  of  his  of  in- 
specting a  "diseased  viscus"  is  precisely  what  I  meant  by 
"biological  reasoning  about  spiritual  things."  And  I  stand 
by  it,  that  it  is  just  as  false  in  science  as  it  is  deleterious  in 
morals.  It  is  an  attempt  (I  will  not  say  arrogant,  I  am 
inclined  to  use  another  epithet)  to  explain,  by  physical  obser- 
vations, what  can  only  be  explained  by  the  most  subtle  moral, 
sociological,  and  historical  observations.  It  is  to  think  you 
can  find  the  golden  eggs  by  cutting  up  the  goose,  instead  of 
watching  the  goose  to  see  where  she  lays  the  eggs. 

I  am  quite  aware  that  Professor  Huxley  has  elsewhere 
formulated  his  belief  that  Biology  is  the  science  which  "in- 
cludes man  and  all  his  ways  and  works."  If  history,  law, 
politics,  morals,  and  political  economy  are  merely  branches 
of  biology,  we  shall  want  new  dictionaries  indeed;  and  bi- 
ology will  embrace  about  four-fifths  of  human  knowledge. 
But  this  is  not  a  question  of  language;  for  we  here  have 
Professor  Huxley  actually  bringing  religion  within  the  range 
of  physiological  inquiry,  and  settling  its  problems  by  refer- 
ences to  "diseased  viscus."  But  the  difi'erenccs  between  us 
are  a  long  story ;  and  since  Professor  Huxley  has  sought  me 
out,  and  in  somewhat  monitorial  tone  has  proposed  to  set  me 
right,  I  will  take  an  early  occasion  to  try  and  set  forth  what  I 
find  paradoxical  in  his  notions  of  the  relations  of  Biology  and 
Philosophy. 

I  note  a  few  special  points  between  us,  and  I  have  done. 
Professor  Huxley  is  so  well  satisfied  with  his  idea  of  a 
"physical  theory  of  moral  phenomena,"  that  he  constantly 
attributes  that  sense  to  my  words,  though  I  carefully  guarded 
my  language  from  such  a  construction.     Thus  he  cjuotes 


242  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

from  me  a  passage  begimiing,  "Man  is  one,  however  com- 
pound," but  he  breaks  off  the  quotation  just  as  I  go  on  to 
speak  of  the  direct  analysis  of  mental  and  moral  faculties  by 
mental  and  moral  science,  not  by  physiological  science.  I 
say:  "Philosophy  and  science"  have  accomplished  explana- 
tions; I  do  not  say  biology;  and  the  biological  part  of  the 
explanation  is  a  small  and  subordinate  part  of  the  whole.  I 
do  not  say  that  the  correspondence  between  physical  and 
moral  phenomena  is  an  explanation  of  the  human  organism. 
Professor  Huxley  says  that,  and  I  call  it  materialism.  Nor 
do  I  say  that  "spiritual  sensibility  is  a  bodily  function."  I 
say,  it  is  a  moral  function;  and  I  complain  that  Professor 
Huxley  ignores  the  distinction  between  moral  and  physical 
functions  of  the  human  organism. 

As  to  the  distinction  between  anatomy  and  physiology,  if 
he  will  look  at  my  words  again,  he  will  see  that  I  use  these 
terms  with  perfect  accuracy.  Six  lines  below  the  passage  he 
quotes,  I  speak  of  the  human  mechanism  being  only  ex- 
plained by  a  "complete  anatomy  and  biology,''^  showing  that 
anatomy  is  merely  one  of  the  instruments  of  biology. 

"He  might  be  surprised  to  hear"  that  he  does  not  himself 
give  an  accurate  definition  of  physiology.  But  so  it  is.  He 
says:  "Physiology  is  the  science  which  treats  of  the  func- 
tions of  the  living  organism."  Not  so,  for  the  finest  spiritual 
sensibility  is,  as  Professor  Huxley  admits,  a  function  of  a 
living  organism;  and  physiology  is  not  the  science  which 
treats  of  the  spiritual  sensibilities.  They  belong  to  moral 
science.  There  are  mental,  moral,  affective  functions  of  the 
Hving  organism;  and  they  are  not  within  the  province  of 
physiology.  Physiology  is  the  science  which  treats  of  the 
bodily  functions  of  the  living  organism ;  as  Professor  Huxley 
says  in  his  admirable  Elementary  Lessons,  it  deals  with  the 
facts  "concerning  the  action  of  the  body"     I  complain  of 


REPLY  TO  CRITICISMS  243 

the  pseudo-science  which  drops  that  distinction  for  a  minute. 
He  says :  "The  explanation  of  a  physiological  fimction  is  the 
demonstration  of  the  connection  of  that  function  with  the 
molecular  state  of  the  organ  which  exerts  the  function." 
That  I  dispute.  It  is  only  a  small  part  of  the  explanation. 
The  explanation  substantially  is  the  demonstration  of  the 
laws  and  all  the  conditions  of  the  function.  The  explana- 
tion of  the  circulation  of  the  blood  is  the  demonstration  of 
all  its  laws,  modes,  and  conditions ;  and  the  molecular  ante- 
cedents of  it  are  but  a  small  part  of  the  explanation.  The 
principal  part  relates  to  the  molar  (and  not  the  molecular) 
action  of  the  heart  and  other  organs. 

"The  function  of  motion  is  explained,"  he  says,  "when 
the  movements  of  the  living  body  are  found  to  have  certain 
molecular  changes  for  their  invariable  antecedents."  Noth- 
ing of  the  kind.  The  function  of  bodily  motion  is  explained 
when  the  laws,  modes,  and  conditions  of  that  motion  are 
demonstrated ;  and  molecular  antecedents  are  but  a  part  of 
these  conditions.  The  main  part  of  the  explanation,  again, 
deals  with  molar,  not  molecular,  states  of  certain  organs. 
"The  function  of  sensation  is  explained,"  says  Professor 
Huxley,  "when  the  molecular  changes,  which  are  the  in- 
variable antecedents  of  sensations,  are  discovered."  Not  a 
bit  of  it.  The  function  of  sensation  is  only  explained  when 
the  laws  and  conditions  of  sensation  are  demonstrated.  And 
the  main  part  of  this  demonstration  will  come  from  direct 
observation  of  the  .sensitive  organism  organically,  and  by  no 
molecular  discovery  whatever.  All  this  is  precisely  the  ma- 
terialism which  I  condemn ;  the  fancying  that  one  science 
can  do  the  work  of  another,  and  that  any  molecular  discovery 
can  dispense  with  direct  study  of  organisms  in  their  organic, 
social,  mental,  and  moral  aspects.  Will  Professor  Huxley 
say  that  the  function  of  any  Symposium  is  explained,  when 


244  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

we  have  chemically  analysed  the  solids  and  liquids  which 
effect  molecular  change  in  the  digestive  apparatus?  If  so, 
let  us  ask  the  butler  if  he  cannot  produce  us  a  less  heady  and 
more  mellow  vintage.  What  irritated  viscus  is  responsible 
for  the  Materialist  in  Philosophy  ?  We  shall  all  philosophise 
aright,  if  our  friend  Tyndall  can  hit  for  us  the  exact  chemical 
formula  for  our  drinks. 

It  does  not  surprise  me,  so  much  as  it  might,  to  find  Pro- 
fessor Huxley  slipping  into  really  inaccurate  definitions  in 
physiology,  when  I  remember  that  hallucination  of  his  about 
questions  of  science  all  becoming  questions  of  molecular 
physics.  The  molecular  facts  are  valuable  enough;  but  we 
are  getting  molecular-mad,  if  we  forget  that  molecular  facts 
have  only  a  special  part  in  physiology,  and  hardly  any  part 
at  all  in  sociology,  history,  morals,  and  politics;  though  I 
quite  agree  that  there  is  no  single  fact  in  social,  moral,  or 
mental  philosophy  that  has  not  its  correspondence  in  some 
molecular  fact,  if  we  only  could  know  it.  All  human  things 
undoubtedly  depend  on,  and  are  certainly  connected  with, 
the  general  laws  of  the  solar  system.  And  to  say  that  ques- 
tions of  human  organisms,  much  less  of  human  society,  tend 
to  become  questions  of  molecular  physics  is  exactly  the  kind 
of  confusion  it  would  be  if  I  said  that  questions  of  history 
tend  to  become  questions  of  astronomy,  and  that  the  more 
refined  calculations  of  planetary  movements  in  the  future 
will  explain  to  us  the  causes  of  the  English  Rebellion  and  the 
French  Revolution. 

There  is  an  odd  instance  of  this  confusion  of  thought  at 
the  close  of  Professor  Huxley's  paper,  which  still  more  oddly 
Lord  Blachford,  who  is  so  strict  in  his  logic,  cites  with  ap- 
proval. "Has  a  stone  a  future  life,"  says  Professor  Huxley, 
"because  the  wavelets  it  may  cause  in  the  sea  persist  through 
space  and  time?"     Well !  has  a  stone  a  life  at  all?  because 


REPLY   TO   CRITICISMS  245 

if  it  has  no  present  life,  I  cannot  see  why  it  should  have  a 
future  life.  How  is  any  reasoning  about  the  inorganic  world 
to  help  us  here  in  reasoning  about  the  organic  world  ?  Pro- 
fessor Huxley  and  Lord  Blachford  might  as  well  ask  if  a 
stone  is  capable  of  civilisation  because  I  said  that  man  was. 
I  think  that  man  is  wholly  different  from  a  stone ;  and  from 
a  fiddle ;  and  even  from  a  dog ;  and  that  to  say  that  a  man 
cannot  exert  any  influence  on  other  men  after  his  death, 
because  a  dog  cannot,  or  because  a  fiddle,  or  because  a  stone 
cannot,  may  be  to  reproduce  with  rather  needless  affectation 
the  verbal  quibbles  and  pitfalls  which  Socrates  and  the 
sophists  prepared  for  each  other  in  some  wordy  symposium 
of  old. 

Lastly,  Professor  Huxley  seems  to  think  that  he  has  dis- 
posed of  me  altogether,  so  soon  as  he  can  point  to  a  sym- 
pathy between  theologians  and  myself.  I  trust  there  is  great 
affinity  and  great  sympathy  between  us;  and  pray  let  him 
not  think  that  I  am  in  the  least  ashamed  of  that  common 
ground.  Positivism  has  quite  as  much  sympathy  with  the 
genuine  theologian  as  it  has  with  the  scientific  specialist. 
The  former  may  be  working  on  a  wrong  intellectual  basis, 
and  often  it  may  be  by  most  perverted  methods;  but  in  the 
best  types  he  has  a  high  social  aim  and  a  great  moral  cause 
to  maintain  amongst  men.  The  latter  is  usually  right  in  his 
intellectual  basis  as  far  as  it  goes;  but  it  does  not  go  very 
far,  and  in  the  great  moral  cause  of  the  spiritual  destinies  of 
men  he  is  often  content  with  utter  indilTcrcnce  and  simple 
nihilism.  Mere  raving  at  priestcraft,  and  beadles,  and  out- 
ward investments  is  indeed  a  poor  solution  of  the  mighty 
problems  of  the  human  soul  and  of  social  organisation. 
And  the  instinct  of  the  mass  of  mankind  will  long  reject  a 
biology  which  has  nothing  for  these  but  a  sneer.  It  will  not 
do  for  Professor  Huxley  to  say  that  he  is  only  a  poor  biologist 


246  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

and  careth  for  none  of  these  things.  His  biology,  however, 
"includes  man  and  all  his  ways  and  works."  Besides,  he 
is  a  leader  in  Israel ;  he  has  preached  an  entire  volume  of 
Lay  Sermons;  and  he  has  waged  many  a  war  with  theo- 
logians and  philosophers  on  religious  and  philosophic  prob- 
lems. What,  if  I  may  ask  him,  is  his  own  religion  and  his 
own  philosophy?  He  says  that  he  knows  no  scientific  men 
who  "neglect  all  philosophical  and  religious  synthesis."  In 
that  he  is  fortunate  in  his  circle  of  acquaintance.  But  since 
he  is  so  earnest  in  asking  me  questions,  let  me  ask  him  to 
tell  the  world  what  is  his  own  synthesis  of  philosophy,  what 
is  his  own  idea  of  religion?  He  can  laugh  at  the  worship 
of  Priests  and  Positivists :  whom,  or  what,  does  he  worship? 
If  he  dislikes  the  word  Soul,  does  he  think  man  has  any- 
thing that  can  be  called  a  spiritual  nature?  If  he  derides 
my  idea  of  a  Future  life,  does  he  think  that  there  is  anything 
which  can  be  said  of  a  man,  when  his  carcase  is  laid  beneath 
the  sod,  beyond  a  simple  final  Vale?  Has  he  made  such 
testamentary  directions  ? 

Space  fails  me  to  reply  to  the  appeals  of  so  many  critics. 
I  cannot  enter  with  Mr.  Roden  Noel  on  that  great  question 
of  the  materialisation  of  the  spirits  of  the  dead ;  I  know  not 
whether  we  shall  be  "made  one  with  the  great  Elohim,  or 
angels  of  Nature,  or  if  we  shall  grovel  in  dead  material 
bodily  life."  I  know  nothing  of  this  high  matter:  I  do  not 
comprehend  this  language.  Nor  can  I  add  anything  to  what 
I  have  said  on  that  sense  of  personality  which  Lord  Selborne 
and  Canon  Barry  so  eloquently  press  on  me.  To  me  that 
sense  of  personality  is  a  thing  of  somewhat  slow  growth, 
resulting  from  our  entire  nervous  organisation  and  our  com- 
posite mental  constitution.  It  seems  to  me  that  we  can 
often  trace  it  building  up  and  trace  it  again  decaying  away. 


REPLY  TO   CRITICISMS  247 

We  feel  ourselves  to  be  men,  because  we  have  human  bodies 
and  human  minds.  Is  that  not  enough  ?  Has  the  baby  an 
hour  old  this  sense  of  personality  ?  Are  you  sure  that  a  dog 
or  an  elephant  has  not  got  it  ?  Then  has  the  baby  no  soul ; 
has  the  dog  a  soul  ?  Do  you  know  more  of  your  neighbour, 
apart  from  inference,  than  you  know  of  the  dog?  Again,  I 
cannot  enter  upon  Mr.  Greg's  beautiful  reflections,  save  to 
point  out  how  largely  he  supports  me.  He  shows,  I  think 
with  masterly  logic,  how  diflicult  it  is  to  fit  this  new  notion 
of  a  glorified  activity  on  to  the  old  orthodoxy  of  beatific 
ecstasy.  Canon  Barry  reminds  us  how  this  orthodoxy  in- 
volved the  resurrection  of  the  body,  and  the  same  ditficulty 
has  driven  Air.  Roden  Noel  to  suggest  that  the  material 
world  itself  may  be  the  debris  of  the  just  made  perfect.  But 
Dr.  Ward,  as  might  be  expected,  falls  back  on  the  beatific 
ecstasy  as  conceived  by  the  mystics  of  the  thirteenth  century. 
No  word  here  about  moral  activity  and  the  social  converse, 
as  in  the  Elysian  fields,  imagined  by  philosophers  of  less 
orthodox  severity. 

One  word  more.  If  my  language  has  given  any  believer 
pain,  I  regret  it  sincerely.  It  may  have  been  somewhat 
obscure,  since  it  has  been  so  widely  arraigned,  and  I  think 
misconceived.  My  position  is  this.  The  idea  of  a  glorified 
energy  in  an  ampler  life  is  an  idea  utterly  incompatible  with 
exact  thought,  one  which  evaporates  in  contradictions,  in 
phrases  which  when  pressed  have  no  meaning.  The  idea 
of  beatific  ecstasy  is  the  old  and  orthodox  idea;  it  does  not 
involve  so  many  contradictions  as  the  former  idea,  but  tlien 
it  does  not  satisfy  our  moral  judgment.  I  say  plainly  that 
the  hope  of  such  an  infinite  ecstasy  is  an  inane  and  unworthy 
crown  of  a  human  life.  And  when  Dr.  Ward  assures  me 
that  it  is  merely  the  prolongation  of  the  saintly  life,  then  I 
say  the  saintly  life  is  an   inane  and   unworthy  life.     The 


248  PHILOSOPHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

words  I  used  about  the  "selfish"  view  of  futurity,  I  applied 
only  to  those  who  say  they  care  for  nothing  but  personal 
enjoyment,  and  to  those  whose  only  aim  is  "to  save  their 
own  souls."  Mr.  Baldwin  Brown  has  nobly  condemned  this 
creed  in  words  far  stronger  than  mine.  And  here  let  us 
close  with  the  reflection  that  the  language  of  controversy 
must  always  be  held  to  apply  not  to  the  character  of  our 
opponents,  but  to  the  logical  consequences  of  their  doctrines, 
if  uncorrected  and  if  forced  to  their  extreme. 


XVI 

THE    FUTURE    OF   AGNOSTICISM 

The  central  and  pressing  problem  that  awaits  Christianity 
in  the  future,  if  we  are  to  trust  its  official  and  orthodox 
teachers,  is  how  shall  it  overcome  that  paralysis  of  religious 
faith  which  passes  under  a  convenient  solecism  as  Agnostic? 
Agnosticism  is  a  vague  and  elastic  phrase  to  describe  the 
state  of  mind  of  large  and  growing  sections  of  all  cultured 
and  thoughtful  minds.  It  is  almost  assumed  that  the  philoso- 
pher, the  man  of  science,  the  man  of  great  practical  experi- 
ence, is  more  or  less  an  Agnostic,  until  he  declares  himself 
a  convinced  Christian,  and  then  the  fact  is  widely  proclaimed 
and  heartily  welcomed.  I  propose  to  ask  whether  a  phase 
of  mind  so  largely  prevailing  in  the  higher  intellectual  ranks 
is  permanent,  creative,  final.  Is  Agnosticism  a  substantive 
religious  belief  at  all?  Can  it  grow  into  a  religious  belief? 
Can  it  supersede  religious  belief? 

It  is  not  at  all  necessary  to  frame  an  exact  definition  of 
Agnosticism,  a  task  that  is  far  from  easy.  It  may  embrace 
a  variety  of  difi"crent  opinions,  ranging  through  many  types 
of  Pantheistic  and  humanitarian  belief,  to  the  religion  of  the 
Unknowable,  and  so  on  down  to  a  convenient  screen  for 
cynicism  or  a  simple  state  of  mere  indiflerency.  The  forms 
of  Agnosticism  may  be  almost  as  many  as  the  forms  of 
Theism,  for  it  includes  in  the  widest  sense  all  those  who 
consciously  avow  Ignorance  to  be  the  sum  of  their  reflections 
on  the  origin  of  the  Universe,  the  moral  government  of  the 
world,  and  the  future  of  the  spirit  after  death. 

249 


250  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON  SENSE 

In  one  sense  this  represents  the  conclusion  of  Auguste 
Comte;  it  was  that  of  Charles  Darwin,  as  he  says,  in  a  far 
less  steady  way ;  it  is  certainly  that  of  Herbert  Spencer,  and 
of  most  of  those  who  rest  in  a  philosophy  of  evolution.  An 
eminent  politician  who  was  once  pressed  by  an  equally  emi- 
nent critic  to  formulate  his  views  on  these,  as  most  think 
them,  all-important  problems,  replied:  "My  dear  fellow, 
those  are  matters  whereon  I  never  could  feel  the  slightest 
interest !"  But  this  is  not  the  true  faith  of  the  Agnostic  — 
indeed,  this  eminent  politician  counted  himself  a  Church- 
man. Thousands  of  busy  men,  men  of  pleasure,  of  ambition, 
the  selfish,  the  vicious,  and  the  careless,  have  no  definite 
opinion  and  no  perceptible  interest.  But  they  are  not  prop- 
erly Agnostics.  To  be  undecided,  indifferent,  or  callous  is 
not  to  be  convinced  of  one's  own  ignorance.  The  Agnostic 
proper  is  one  who,  having  honestly  sought  to  know,  acquiesces 
in  Ignorance  and  avows  it  as  the  best  practical  solution  of  a 
profound  but  impenetrable  problem. 

Such  is  the  mental  attitude  of  a  very  powerful  and  grow- 
ing order  of  inteUigences ;  who,  if  far  from  a  majority  in 
numbers,  include  a  heavy  proportion  of  the  leaders  of  thought. 
Is  this  mental  attitude  a  religious  creed  in  itself?  Can  it  be- 
come the  substitute  for  all  other  religious  creeds? 

The  true  Agnostic  by  conviction  puts  forward  his  igno- 
rance as  the  central  result  of  his  views  about  religion.  A 
man  may  incline  to  the  agnostic  frame  of  mind,  or  he  may 
be  agnostic  with  respect  to  given  metaphysical  problems, 
without  being  fairly  and  truly  an  Agnostic  by  profession. 
The  Agnostic  takes  his  stand  by  principle  on  ignorance,  just 
as  the  Protestant  takes  his  stand  on  protesting  against  the 
errors  of  Rome,  and  makes  that  the  badge  and  test  of  reli- 
gious belief.  Many  other  churches,  schools,  and  creeds  ab- 
jure and  reject  the  errors  of  Rome  quite  as  much  as  Protes- 


THE   FUTURE  OF  AGNOSTICISM  25 1 

tants  can,  without  becoming  Protestants.  Deists,  Atheists, 
Jews,  Positivists,  Buddhists,  Mussulmans,  and  Brahmins 
reject  the  Pope  and  all  his  works  quite  as  thoroughly  as  any 
Protestant.  But  it  would  be  ridiculous  to  class  them  as 
Protestants,  because  they  do  not  make  the  differing  from 
the  Church  of  Rome  the  central  result  of  their  views  about 
religion.  They  are  each  properly  described  by  the  name 
which  connotes  the  main  body  of  their  positive  beliefs  and 
practices.  The  Protestant  is  a  Christian  who  protests  against 
the  Roman  Catholic  form  of  Christianity.  The  Atheist  is  one 
who  protests  against  the  theological  doctrine  of  a  Creator 
and  a  moral  providence.  The  Agnostic  is  one  who  protests 
against  any  dogma  respecting  Creation  at  all,  and  who  takes 
his  stand  deliberately  on  ignorance.  All  these  put  some 
specific  denial  into  the  forefront  of  their  deepest  convictions. 
But  the  Agnostic  is  far  more  distinctively  a  denier  than 
the  Protestant.  In  spite  of  this  unhappy  name,  of  which 
large  sections  of  the  Protestant  world  arc  heartily  ashamed, 
the  term  Protestant  still  means  something  substantive,  some- 
thing more  than  one  who  protests.  Protestant  still  means 
Evangelical  Christian.  And  so  the  name  Dissenter  implies 
much  more  than  one  who  dissents  from  the  Established 
Church.  In  spite  of  all  the  gibes  and  flouts  of  a  great  Ag- 
nostic, the  "dissidence  of  Dissent"  marks  those  who  hold  to 
a  Biblical  and  Presbyterian  type  of  Christianity,  much  as 
"the  protestantism  of  the  Protestant  Religion"  includes  all 
types  of  Christians  who  look  to  the  Bible  rather  than  the 
Church  of  Rome  as  the  source  of  faith.  The  Agnostic,  as 
such,  has  no  positive  religious  belief  apart  from  the  assertion 
of  his  ignorance,  for  if  he  had,  he  would  be  named  from  such 
belief.  He  is  rather  in  the  position  of  the  Atheist,  whose 
religious  position  is  based  on  a  denial  of  God,  or  of  the 
Anarchist,  whose  political  aim  is  directed  towards  the  sup- 


252  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

pression  of  all  government,  not  the  establishment  of  any  new 
government,  socialistic  or  otherwise.  The  Agnostic,  the 
Atheist,  and  the  Anarchist  concentrate  their  opinions  re- 
spectively on  opposition  to  creeds,  opposition  to  Providence, 
and  opposition  to  governments. 

Whatever  the  logical  strength  of  Agnosticism  as  a  philo- 
sophical position,  as  a  moral  and  social  creed,  it  must  share 
the  inherent  weakness  of  every  mere  negation.  In  the  realm 
of  ideas,  quite  as  much  as  in  the  realm  of  action,  it  is  for 
ever  true :  —  "He  only  destroys  who  can  replace."  The  re- 
action in  living  memory  against  all  forms  of  mere  unbelief 
such  as,  from  Voltaire  to  Richard  Carlile,  awakened  the 
passions  of  our  ancestors,  shows  no  signs  of  abatement.  The 
net  result  of  the  whole  negative  attack  on  the  Gospel  has 
been  perhaps  to  deepen  the  moral  hold  of  Christianity  on 
society.  Men  without  a  trace  of  theological  belief  turn  from 
the  negative  attack  now  with  an  instinctive  sense  of  weari- 
ness and  disgust.  Just  as  even  radicals  and  revolutionists 
look  on  the  mania  of  pure  anarchism  as  the  worst  hindrance 
to  their  own  causes,  so  all  who  have  substantive  beliefs  of 
their  own,  however  unorthodox,  find  nothing  but  mischief 
in  militant  atheism.  Auguste  Comte  found  not  only  mis- 
chief, but  folly,  in  accordance  with  his  profound  aphorism, 
"Atheism  is  the  most  irrational  form  of  metaphysics" ;  mean- 
ing that  it  propounds  as  the  solution  of  an  insoluble  asnigma 
the  hypothesis  which  of  all  others  is  the  least  capable  of 
proof,  the  least  simple,  the  least  plausible,  and  the  least  use- 
ful. And  although  Comte,  in  common  with  the  whole  evo- 
lutionist school  of  thought,  entirely  accepts  the  Agnostic 
position  as  a  matter  of  logic,  he  is  as  much  convinced  as  any 
Ecumenical  Council  could  be,  that  everything  solid  in  the 
spiritual  world  must  rest  on  beliefs,  not  negations ;  on  know- 
ledge, not  on  ignorance. 


THE  FUTURE  OF  AGNOSTICISM  253 

So  clear  is  this  now  that  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,  the  most 
important  leader  of  the  pure  Agnostic  school,  has  developed 
the  Unknowable,  about  which  nothing  can  be  conceived  or 
understood,  into  an  "Infinite  and  Eternal  Energy,  by  which 
all  things  are  created  and  sustained."  As  every  one  knows, 
he  has  tried  to  make  out  the  Unknowable  to  be  something 
positive  and  not  negative,  active  and  not  indifferent.  So 
much  so  that  his  most  important  follower,  ^Ir.  John  Fiske, 
of  America,  has  declared  that  this  Energy  of  Mr.  Spencer's 
"is  certainly  the  power  which  is  here  recognised  as  God" 
(Fiske's  Idea  of  God,  p.  xxv.).  This,  however,  is  a  subject 
which  there  is  no  need  to  pursue  farther,  at  any  rate  until 
some  one  has  appeared  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic  to  con- 
tend that  Mr.  Spencer's  idea  of  the  Unknowable  is  certainly 
the  power  which  is  here  recognised  as  God.  I  shall  not 
farther  argue  this  point.  But  this  abortive  paradox  of  an 
eminent  thinker  suffices  to  show  how  sterile  a  thing  he  recog- 
nises a  bare  Agnosticism  to  be. 

What  is  the  source  of  all  religion?  Religion  means  that 
combination  of  belief  and  veneration  which  man  feels  for  the 
power  which  exercises  a  dominant  influence  over  his  whole 
life.  It  has  an  intellectual  element  and  a  moral  element.  It 
includes  both  faith  and  worship  —  something  that  can  be 
believed  and  something  that  can  be  reverenced.  These  two 
are  fundamental,  ineradicable  facts  in  human  nature.  And 
what  is  more  they  arc  the  supreme  and  dominant  facts,  which 
will  ultimately  master  or  absorb  all  others  in  the  long  run. 
For  this  reason  what  men  ultimately  believe  and  venerate 
—  their  religion  —  is  very  rightly  assumed  to  be  the  charac- 
teristic fact  in  every  phase  of  civilisation.  We  talk  of  the 
Mahometan,  the  Buddhist,  the  Cathoh'c,  the  Pagan  world; 
of  the  years  of  the  Hegira,  of  Anno  Domini. 

Our  deepest  and  our  widest  thoughts,  our  earliest  and  our 


254  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

latest,  about  human  nature,  life,  and  the  visible  world,  bring 
us  always  back  to  this:  —  "Here  am  I,  and  millions  such  as 
I  am,  surrounded,  as  it  seems,  in  a  huge  universe  of  out- 
ward activity,  distinct  from  it,  but  unable  to  exist  an  hour 
without  it,  able  in  many  ways  to  act  upon  it,  being  acted 
upon  by  it  in  ways  far  greater  and  more  constant.  What  is 
it?  Is  it  well  disposed  to  me,  is  it  ill  disposed?  Is  it  dis- 
posed at  all?  Has  it  any  will  or  any  feeling  at  all?  Is  it 
the  instrument  of  any  being  with  will  and  feeling,  and  if  so, 
of  what  being  ?  What  is  that  relation  between  Man  and  the 
World?" 

Our  hearts,  like  our  brains,  are  ever  stirring  us  with  won- 
der, fear,  love,  admiration,  and  awe  as  we  watch  the  forces 
around  us,  sometimes  so  cruel,  so  terrible,  so  deadly,  some- 
times so  lovely,  so  beneficent,  so  serene.  All  we  enjoy,  and 
love,  all  we  can  produce,  or  look  for,  all  we  suffer,  and  fear : 
pain,  death,  bereavement,  life,  health,  and  protection  from 
torture,  all  alike  come  to  us  through  the  visible  forces  of  the 
earth,  or  of  beings  on  the  earth.  Our  entire  existence,  ma- 
terial, emotional,  practical,  depends  on  them.  Do  they  seek 
to  help  us  or  do  they  seek  our  ill,  or  are  they  absolutely  in- 
different ?  The  individual  by  himself  is  as  absolutely  power- 
less in  their  presence  as  the  minutest  winged  thing  before  the 
summer  breeze  which  may  gather  into  a  tornado.  But  nian 
in  his  helplessness  and  his  blind  terror  or  keen  hope  turns 
ever  to  the  reason,  and  those  who  seem  to  reason  best,  say- 
ing; — •  "Tell  us  something  about  this  World  in  its  relation  to 
Man :  tell  us  something  of  the  living  Spirit  which  is  within 
it,  or  above  it,  or  behind  it :  or  if  there  be  no  such  Spirit,  tell 
us  something  about  the  workings  of  this  world  and  how  to 
get  the  good  from  it  and  avoid  the  evil." 

There  is,  however,  much  more  than  the  World.  There  is 
Mankind,  the  most  powerful,  the  most  numerous,  the  most 


THE   FUTURE   OF   AGNOSTICISM 


255 


noble,  the  most  universal  living  force  visible  upon  the  planet, 
through  vv^hom  and  in  whom  alone  real  life  is  possible  for  an 
individual.  The  individual  man,  when  we  think  out  the  real 
meaning  of  civilised  life,  is  just  as  completely  dependent  on 
mankind  for  everything  he  has,  or  does,  or  knows,  or  hopes 
for,  as  the  infant  is  dependent  on  its  parent  or  nurse  for 
every  hour  of  existence.  Withdraw  them  and  it  perishes 
in  a  day.  Withdraw  from  the  mightiest  intellect  or  the 
most  potent  character  the  co-operation  of  men  past  and 
present,  and  it  sinks  to  the  level  of  the  fox  or  the  tiger;  and 
being  neither  so  fleet  nor  so  strong,  would  perish  in  less  than 
a  week.  At  every  turn  of  human  life,  in  activity,  in  thought, 
in  emotion,  there  are  always  three  powers  perpetually  in 
contact  —  the  living  soul  which  is  thinking,  acting,  or  feel- 
ing; the  mass  of  the  world  outside  man,  touching  him  at 
every  point;  and  between  these  two  the  sum  of  mankind 
past,  present,  and  to  come,  through  which  alone  he  lives  and 
acts.  Whether  the  universe  be  itself  living  and  conscious 
(Pantheism),  whether  it  be  self-existent  and  purely  material 
(Atheism),  or  whether  it  be  created  and  directed  by  a  Su- 
preme mind  (Theism)  —  all  this  is  a  matter  of  religious  and 
philosophical  speculation.  But  in  any  case  there  are  always 
at  least  three  elements  —  the  man,  mankind,  and  the  world. 
The  most  profound  thought,  like  the  experience  of  every 
day,  always  comes  back  to  this,  for  it  is  a  matter  of  morality 
and  of  conduct  quite  as  much  as  of  intellect  and  sympathy. 
Morality,  the  very  possibility  of  morality,  depends  on  this: 
that  a  man  feels  the  pressure  over  him  of  conditions.  There 
can  be  no  true  duty  without  a  sense  of  the  limits,  possibili- 
ties, and  aim  of  human  life.  Life  is  an  endless  caprice,  where 
there  are  no  definite  lines  of  duty,  recognised  as  set  by  the 
order  of  things,  and  a  possible  end  which  cfTort  can  reach. 
And  so  the  bare  knowledge  of  the  laws  of  nature,  with  no 


256  PHILOSOPHY  OF   COMMON   SENSE 

supreme  conception  of  what  nature  means,  such  as  can  fill 
the  imagination,  with  no  dominant  idea  whereon  the  sym- 
pathy and  the  reverence  can  expand  itself,  is  mere  dust  and 
ashes,  wholly  incompetent  to  sustain  conduct  or  to  give 
peace.  The  Agnostic  is  willing  to  trust  to  science  as  an 
adequate  answer  to  the  intellect,  to  ethics  as  a  sufficient  basis 
for  conduct.  He  might  as  well  trust  in  the  rule  of  three  and 
the  maxims  in  a  copybook  to  deal  with  the  storms  and  trials 
of  life. 

All  that  has  been  said  by  preachers  and  prophets  from 
Moses  and  Isaiah  down  to  Keble  and  Cardinal  Newman  as 
to  the  importance  of  religion  to  life,  as  to  the  paramount 
necessity  of  a  central  object  of  reverence,  devotion,  and  faith, 
is  not  by  one  word  in  excess  of  the  truth.     On  the  contrary, 
it  is  still  lamentably  short  of  the  truth,  for  it  has  been  based 
by  all  theological  preachers  on  a  very  narrow  and  imperfect 
conception  of  religion.     Not  one  word  of  all  this  has  ever 
been  shaken  by  the  infidel  or  Agnostic  schools.     It  is  true 
that  they  have  not  only  shaken  to  their  foundations,  but  in 
our  opinion  finally  annihilated,  the  particular  type  of  religion 
which  theology  presents,  the  actual  doctrines,  the  assertion 
of  supposed  historic  fact,  the  gratuitous  assumptions  which 
theological  religion  teaches  under  a  thousand  contradictory 
forms.     But  criticism  has  never  shaken,  nay,  has  never  even 
addressed  itself  to  weaken,  the  dominant  place  of  religion  in 
hfe.     For  some  two  centuries  criticism  has  exhausted  itself 
in  battering  down  the  doctrines  and  methods  of  the  current 
religion.     But  not  a  rational  argument  has  ever  been  put  for- 
ward to  show  that  religion  of  some  kind  is  less  necessary  than 
before,  less  inevitable,  less  dominant.     Agnosticism  says  to 
the  Churches:   "I  decline  to  believe  in  your  religion."     But 
the  necessity  for  some  religion  remains  just  as  it  did  before. 
And  until  Agnosticism  has  told  us  what  religion  we  are  to 


THE  FUTURE  OF  AGNOSTICISM 


257 


believe,  or  why  religion  is  henceforth  superfluous,  it  will  re- 
main the  private  opinion  of  isolated  and  cultivated  minds  in 
more  or  less  comfortable  surroundings. 

This  explains  the  mysterious  fact  that,  in  spite  of  the  hail- 
storm of  destructive  criticism  which  is  incessantly  poured  on 
every  bastion,  fort,  and  outwork  of  the  churches,  they  still 
continue  to  reply  to  the  fire  of  the  enemy,  and  are  still  full 
of  enthusiastic  defenders.  "He  only  destroys  who  can  re- 
place." And  the  Agnostic  position  is  ex  hypothesi  a  pure 
negation.  The  profound  instinct  of  all  healthy  spirits  recog- 
nises that  a  state  of  no-religion,  of  deliberate  acquiescence  in 
negation,  of  non-interest  on  principle  in  these  dominant  ques- 
tions, is  weak,  unworthy,  even  immoral.  It  is  in  vain  that 
the  man  of  science  and  the  man  of  affairs  ask  to  be  left  alone, 
to  do  their  own  work  in  their  own  way,  to  leave  these  ulti- 
mate problems  to  those  whom  they  concern,  or  to  those  who 
care  for  them.  The  instinct  of  all  good  men  and  women 
feels  that  a  man  without  a  genuine  religion  —  a  man  to 
whom  the  relation  of  Man  to  the  World,  Man  to  his  fellow 
Men,  is  a  mere  academic  question,  a  question  to  be  put  aside 
—  is  a  source  of  danger  and  corruption  to  his  neighbours 
and  the  society  in  which  he  lives;  that  selfishness,  caprice, 
anti-social  self-assertion,  or  equally  anti-social  indolence  are 
his  sure  destiny,  and  his  besetting  weakness.  The  appeals 
and  reproaches  of  the  older  religious  creeds  as  to  the  folly 
and  danger  of  stifling  the  eternal  religious  instincts,  are  as 
true  and  as  powerful  now  as  ever,  though  every  single  dogma 
of  religion  were  shivered  to  dust. 

It  would  be  idle  indeed  to  attempt  to  repeat  in  the  feeble 
tone  of  a  far-away  echo,  the  arguments,  the  appeals,  the 
yearning  cry  of  the  great  religious  minds  for  thousands  of 
years  as  to  the  hoUowness  of  life,  the  feebleness  of  man, 
without  an  object  of  awe  and  love.     The  sayings  of  an  army 


258  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

of  preachers  crowd  upon  the  memory  as  we  think  upon  this, 
from  Job,  David,  Solomon,  and  the  prophets.  "Happy  is 
the  man  that  findeth  wisdom,  and  the  man  that  getteth 
understanding.  Her  ways  are  ways  of  pleasantness,  and  all 
her  paths  are  peace."  And  so  on,  through  the  prophets  to 
the  words  of  the  Gospel  and  of  Paul,  of  Augustine's  vision 
of  the  City  that  cannot  be  destroyed,  and  down  to  Gregory 
and  Bernard,  a  Kempis  and  Bunyan,  Bossuet  and  Taylor, 
Wesley  and  De  Maistre,  from  countless  voices,  Jewish, 
Christian,  Mussulman,  Confucian,  and  Buddhist,  Protestant, 
and  Catholic,  and  Deist.  However  much  they  differ  in  the 
form,  they  all  agree  in  this  —  the  supreme  importance  of 
religion  to  man.  Not  a  word  of  all  this  has  ever  been  shaken : 
not  a  word  of  it  has  even  been  impugned.  All  that  Agnos- 
ticism has  done  is  to  assert  that  Theology  has  not  solved  the 
religious  problem.  It  has  not  offered  a  shadow  of  a  sugges- 
tion as  to  what  the  solution  is,  nor  has  it  cast  a  doubt  on  the 
urgency  of  the  problem  itself. 

Agnosticism  is  consequently  a  mere  step,  an  indispensable 
step,  in  the  evolution  of  religion,  though,  by  its  very  nature, 
a  step  on  which  it  is  impossible  to  rest.  Intellectually  it  is 
quite  as  impossible  to  remain  an  agnostic  as  politically  it 
would  be  to  remain  an  anarchist.  And  for  precisely  the 
same  reason.  Society  is  such  that  only  the  most  vapid  and 
uneasy  spirit  can  permanently  acquiesce  in  the  negation  of 
all  government.  And  society  is  likewise  such  that  only  a 
dry,  mechanical  soul  can  permanently  rest  in  the  negation  of 
all  religion.  A  thousand  commonplaces  have  shown  that 
unless  the  first  place  in  the  imagination  and  the  heart  be 
duly  filled,  the  mind  and  character  are  perpetually  prone  to 
improvise  worthless  ideals  of  love  and  reverence,  under  the 
force  of  which  mind  and  character  are  liable  to  be  violently 
carried  away. 


THE  FUTURE   OF  AGNOSTICISM  259 

The  orthodox  and  the  Agnostic  view  of  religion  are  not  at 
all  the  true  antithesis  one  of  the  other.  The  only  true  antith- 
esis to  a  religion  of  figments  is  a  religion  of  realities,  not  a 
denial  of  the  figments.  The  Agnostic  reply  to  the  theo- 
logians is  but  half  a  reply,  and  a  reply  to  the  least  important 
half.  Orthodox  theology  asserts,  first,  the  paramount  need 
for  religion,  and  next  it  asserts  that  this  need  is  met  by  a 
particular  creed  and  a  specific  object  of  worship.  To  the 
first  of  these  assertions  Agnosticism  has  no  reply  at  all;  to 
the  second  it  replies  "Not  proven."  The  question  is  a  double 
one,  and  no  single  answer  can  at  all  cover  the  ground.  It  is 
quite  possible  that  the  orthodox  view  might  be  partly  right 
and  partly  wrong,  and  the  Agnostic  view  may  be  partly 
right  and  partly  a  mere  blank.  And  this  is  just  what  has 
happened.  The  theologian  is  on  ground  unshaken  whilst  he 
contends  that  true  religion  is  the  sole  guide  of  human  life. 
The  Agnostic  is  on  ground  as  firm  when  he  contends  that 
theology  concerns  itself  with  a  world  where  knowledge  is 
impossible  to  man.  But  the  Agnostic  has  yet  to  carry  the 
argument  to  a  world  where  knowledge  is  possible  to  man. 

The  positivist  point  of  view  thus  stands  midway  between 
theology  and  Agnosticism,  recognising  the  strength  of  each 
and  ofi"ering  to  both  a  modus  vivendi,  a  basis  of  conciliation. 
It  not  only  earnestly  maintains  all  that  theologians  have  ever 
urged  as  to  the  paramount  place  of  religion,  as  to  the  uni- 
versal part  of  religion  in  every  phase  of  life,  as  to  its  power 
to  transfigure  the  individual  man  and  human  society,  large 
or  small,  but  it  vastly  extends  the  scope  of  religion  beyond 
the  wildest  vision  of  theology.  On  the  other  hand,  it  adopts 
without  reserve  the  whole  of  the  Agnostic  logic  as  against 
the  theological  creeds,  very  greatly  reinforcing  it  by  making 
this  Agnostic  logic  the  outcome  of  a  complete  philosophy  of 
science,  and  an  organised  scheme  of  morality  and  society. 


260  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

No  Agnostic  reascner  can  more  inexorably  insist  on  elimi- 
nating from  thought  and  hfe  whatever  philosophy  and  science 
reject  as  "not  proven."  No  theologian  can  more  passion- 
ately insist  on  the  wilderness  that  is  left  in  the  heart  of  the 
man  and  the  life  of  society  which  is  without  the  guidance  of 
religion. 

Strangely  enough,  it  is  this  latter  point  which  theology  in 
our  day  most  miserably  neglects.  It  is  so  strictly  absorbed 
in  its  own  special  creed,  that  it  abandons  the  defence  of  the 
infinitely  greater  cause,  the  meaning  of  religion,  the  relation 
of  religion  to  life,  conduct,  happiness,  and  civilisation.  All 
this  is  totally  distinct  from  any  particular  creed,  and  may 
stand  untouched  by  the  downfall  of  a  dozen  creeds.  So 
completely  have  theologians  identified  this  eternal  truth  with 
their  own  formularies,  that  the  Agnostic  is  allowed  to  sup- 
pose that  when  the  formularies  are  disposed  of  the  religious 
problem  is  at  an  end.  And  the  result  of  it  is,  that  the  cause 
of  religion  as  an  institution  is  to-day  seriously  jeopardised 
by  theologians,  who  are  far  more  concerned  about  particular 
Books  and  sectarian  dogmas  than  about  the  central  principle 
of  human  life. 

It  is  therefore  quite  natural,  however  much  it  may  sur- 
prise some,  that  the  first  task  of  Auguste  Comte  was  to  show 
how  religion  was  a  force,  deeper,  wider,  and  more  onmi- 
present  than  theology  had  ever  described  it;  what  are  the 
eternal  bases  of  religion  in  the  heart  and  in  society;  and 
what  are  the  indestructible  elements  of  religion,  and  function 
of  religion.  It  is  not  in  the  least  a  paradox,  but  a  truth 
capable  of  easy  proof,  that  no  theologian  in  ancient  or  modem 
times,  neither  Paul  nor  Mahomet,  neither  Aquinas  nor  Ber- 
nard, neither  Bossuet  nor  Calvin,  neither  Hooker  nor  Butler, 
have  ever  penetrated  so  profoundly  into  the  elements,  the 
function,  and  the  range  of  religion  in  the  abstract  as  does 


THE   FUTURE   OF    AGNOSTICISM  261 

Auguste  Comte.  All  this,  his  philosophical  analysis  of  what 
religion  can  do  for  life  and  society,  is  entirely  detached  from 
any  given  religious  creed,  and  it  is  quite  as  much  appHcable 
to  Pagan,  Mussulman,  Catholic,  or  Calvinistic  theology,  as 
it  is  to  the  rchgion  of  the  Fetichists,  Buddhists,  or  Confu- 
cians. It  is  so  because  Comte  was  the  first  who  exhaustively 
considered  religion  apart  from  any  creed,  on  a  social  analysis 
of  human  nature  and  society,  by  the  light  of  history,  and 
social  philosophy  at  once.  When  so  viewed  rehgion  is  found 
to  have  a  meaning  far  more  varied  and  certain  than  appears 
in  the  sacred  writings  of  any  confession,  and  to  be  capable 
of  infinite  applications  to  life,  undreamt  of  yet  by  the  most 
ecstatic  mystics  and  the  most  ardent  spirits  of  the  Catholic 
or  Protestant  communions. 

It  is  not,  however,  the  purpose  of  this  essay  to  put  for- 
wards Comte's  answer  to  Theology,  but  merely  to  consider 
the  Agnostic  answer  and  the  future  of  Agnosticism.  The 
question  of  the  place  of  religion  as  an  element  of  human 
nature,  as  a  force  in  human  society,  its  origin,  analysis,  and 
functions,  has  never  been  considered  at  all  from  the  Agnostic 
point  of  view.  What  eminent  Agnostic  has  ever  attempted 
to  grapple  with  the  problem,  except  by  the  unmeaning  phrase 
of  Mr.  Spencer,  that  the  business  of  religion  is  with  the  con- 
sciousness of  a  mystery  that  cannot  be  fathomed  ?  This 
meagre  formula  about  a  very  real  and  vast  power  is  obviously 
only  the  flourish  of  a  man  who  has  nothing  to  say  and  who 
wishes  to  say  something.  Apart  from  this,  what  Agnostic 
has  ever  told  us  what  religion  is,  what  it  ought  to  be,  what 
part  it  plays  in  life  and  in  civihsation?  Agnosticism  has 
not,  in  fact,  carried  out  its  own  principles.  Both  Agnos- 
ticism and  Atheism  are  still  so  completely  under  the  glamour 
of  the  older  Theology  and  its  creeds,  that  they  take  it  enough 
has  been  done  for  religion  when  some  defmitc  assertion  has 


262  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

been  formulated  about  the  central  theological  dogmas,  even 
though  that  definite  assertion  be  a  negation,  as  the  atheist 
contends,  or  a  mere  assertion  of  ignorance,  as  the  Agnostic 
contends.  But  when  these  have  been  asserted,  the  whole 
question  of  religion  still  remains  open  as  a  factor  in  human 
existence.  If  the  Agnostic  and  the  Atheist  would  fairly  face 
this  problem  from  the  solid  ground  of  human  history,  social 
philosophy,  and  moral  analysis,  and  would  entirely  put  aside 
all  further  thought  of  smashing  theology  hip  and  thigh,  they 
would  come  to  see  that  everything  yet  remains  to  be  said 
and  done  in  the  matter  of  religion,  assuming  their  specific 
denials  to  be  perfectly  logical  and  finally  proved. 

In  other  words.  Agnosticism  as  a  religious  philosophy  per 
se  rests  on  an  almost  total  ignoring  of  history  and  social 
evolution.  History  and  social  evolution  force  all  competent 
minds  which  grasp  them  to  frame  some  positive  type  of 
religion,  and  to  recognise  the  indestructible  tie  between  reli- 
gion and  civilisation.  A  strong  mind,  really  saturated  with 
the  historical  sense,  turns  from  Agnosticism  and  Atheism, 
with  the  same  weariness  and  pity  with  which  it  turns  from 
the  Law  of  Nature  and  the  Rights  of  Man.  They  are  all  as 
sounding  brass  or  a  tinkling  cymbal.  History  and  a  theory 
of  social  evolution  based  on  history  of  social  statics,  compels 
us  to  think  upon  the  past  of  religion,  the  need  for  religion, 
and  the  future  of  religion. 

Agnosticism  is  thus  found  to  be  simply  the  temporary 
halting-place  of  those  scientific  men  who  have  not  yet  carried 
their  scientific  habits  of  mind  into  the  history  of  humanity 
as  a  whole.  It  marks  indeed  the  physicists,  and  the  thinkers 
about  physics,  using  physics  in  the  widest  sense  as  the  study 
of  Nature  rather  than  of  Man,  It  would  be  difficult  to  name 
a  single  known  Agnostic  who  has  given  to  history  anything 
like  the  amount  of  thought  and  study  which  he  brings  to  his 


THE   FUTURE  OF  AGNOSTICISM  263 

knowledge  of  the  physical  world.  The  DanN'ins,  the  Hux- 
leys,  the  Tj-ndalls,  have  been  absorbed  in  other  labours 
which  have  left  them  no  opportunity  to  enter  on  the  vast 
field  of  universal  history.  They  would,  of  course,  admit 
that  social  science  is  quite  as  legitimate,  quite  as  indispens- 
able to  the  human  intellect,  as  is  natural  science;  though 
they  recognise  its  present  condition  as  far  less  advanced  and 
far  more  obscure.  But  the  field  of  natural  science  is  itself 
so  gigantic  that  they  may  very  fairly  claim  to  limit  their 
labours  to  that.  In  so  doing,  and  missing  in  social  science 
and  in  historical  evolution  the  precision  of  proof  which  they 
justly  seek  for  in  physical  studies,  they  are  somewhat  inclined 
to  overrate  the  proportion  which  natural  science  bears  to  the 
whole  field  of  knowledge  and  to  forget  that  physical  laws 
are  only  a  part,  and  the  smaller  part,  of  science  in  the  sum. 
Nothing  is  more  common  than  to  hear  an  eminent  savant 
say  —  "So  far  as  I  understand  anything  of  science,"  mean- 
ing by  science  our  knowledge  of  nature  exclusively,  when 
perhaps  he  has  given  as  little  attention  to  social  science,  to 
history,  and  social  evolution  as  the  first  man  he  meets  in  the 
street.  As  to  the  great  discoverers  in  the  physical  realm, 
from  the  Darwins,  the  Huxleys,  the  Tyndalls,  the  Lyclls, 
the  Hookers,  it  would  be  preposterous  to  expect  them  to  with- 
draw precious  hours  from  their  special  pursuits;  as  Aristotle 
says,  it  would  be  ridiculous  to  ask  a  geometrician  to  reason 
persuasively,  or  to  ask  an  orator  to  prove  his  points  by  ge- 
ometry. Mr.  Spencer,  on  the  other  hand,  is  not  a  specialist 
observer,  but  a  philosopher,  and  no  English  philosopher 
before  him  has  ever  so  forcibly  insisted  on  the  supreme  place 
held  in  the  intellectual  synthesis  by  social  science.  This, 
therefore,  is  all  the  more  a  disappointment  to  those  who 
most  admire  his  genius  and  most  carefully  study  the  de- 
velopment of  his  "Synthetic  Philosophy,"  that  he  has  not 


264  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

been  able  to  turn  his  extraordinary  powers  of  co-ordinating 
ideas  to  the  systematic  study  of  universal  history.  It  is  diffi- 
cult, indeed,  to  recall  a  passage  in  which  he  has  contributed 
to  this  grand  task  of  the  future  a  single  reflection  that  does 
justice  to  his  eminent  position.  Yet,  without  a  systematic 
conception  of  history,  a  synthetic  philosophy  of  human  nature 
is  as  utterly  futile  as  a  synthetic  philosophy  of  physical  nature 
would  be  without  biology. 

We  may  now  form  some  general  forecast  of  the  future 
course  of  Agnosticism.  Agnosticism  is  a  stage  in  the  evolu- 
tion of  religion,  an  entirely  negative  stage,  the  point  reached 
by  physicists,  a  purely  mental  conclusion  with  no  relation  to 
things  social  at  all.  It  is  a  stage  as  impossible  for  a  social 
philosophy  to  rest  in  as  it  is  for  a  statesman  to  proclaim  his 
pohcy  to  be  "no  law"  and  "no  government."  But  if  Agnos- 
ticism cannot  rest  as  it  is,  there  is  not  the  slightest  reason  to 
suppose  that  it  can  go  back.  Agnosticism  represents  the 
general  conclusion  of  minds  profoundly  imbued  with  the 
laws  of  physical  nature,  minds  which  find  the  sum  of  the 
physical  laws  to  be  incompatible  with  the  central  dogmas  of 
theology.  And  since  the  physical  laws  rest  on  an  enormous 
mass  of  experimental  demonstration,  and  the  dogmas  of 
theology  upon  the  unsupported  asseverations  of  theologians, 
the  Agnostic,  as  at  present  advised,  holds  by  the  former,  and, 
without  denying  the  latter,  treats  them  as  "not  proven."  But 
the  laws  of  physical  nature  show  no  signs  of  becoming  less 
definite,  less  consistent,  or  less  popular  as  time  goes  on. 
Everything  combines  to  show  that  natural  knowledge  is 
growing  wider,  more  consolidated,  more  dominant  year  by 
year ;  that  the  Reign  of  Law  becomes  more  truly  universal, 
more  indefeasible,  more  familiar  to  all,  just  as  the  reign  of 
supernatural  hypotheses  retreats  into  regions  where  the  light 
of  science  fails  to  penetrate. 


THE   FUTURE  OF   AGNOSTICISM  265 

Whatever,  therefore,  has  fostered  the  Agnostic  habit  of 
mind  in  the  past  seems  destined  to  extend  it  enormously  in 
the  future.  And,  when  the  entire  pubhc  are  completely 
trained  in  a  sense  of  physical  law,  the  Agnostic  habit  of 
mind  must  become  the  mental  state,  not  of  isolated  students 
and  thinkers,  but  of  the  general  body  which  forms  public 
opinion.  There  is  no  weak  spot  about  the  Agnostic  position 
per  se,  no  sign  of  doubt  or  rift  in  its  armour,  as  a  logical 
instrument.  All  that  is  objected  to  is,  that  it  is  simply  one 
syllogism  in  a  very  long  and  complex  process  of  reasoning, 
not  that  the  syllogism  itself  has  any  vestige  of  error.  The 
result  is  that  the  Agnostic  logic  shows  every  sign  not  of 
failure,  but  of  ultimately  becoming  an  axiom  of  ordinary 
thought,  almost  a  truism  or  a  commonplace,  as  minds  are 
more  commonly  imbued  with  the  sense  of  physical  law.  But 
to  accept  the  Agnostic  logic  is  not  to  be  an  Agnostic,  any 
more  than  to  accept  the  protest  against  the  Papal  infallibility 
or  the  Council  of  Trent  is  to  be  a  Protestant.  Hence,  the 
more  universal  becomes  the  adoption  of  the  Agnostic  posi- 
tion, the  more  rare  will  Agnostics  pure  and  simple  become, 
and  the  less  will  Agnosticism  be  looked  on  as  a  creed.  When 
Agnostic  logic  is  simply  one  of  the  canons  of  thought.  Agnos- 
ticism, as  a  distmctive  faith,  will  have  spontaneously  dis- 
appeared. 

As  social  science  and  the  laws  of  social  evolution  more 
and  more  engross  the  higher  minds,  and  become  the  true 
centre  of  public  interest,  Agnosticism,  the  mere  negation  of 
the  physicists,  will  have  left  the  ground  clear  for  the  rise  of 
a  definite  belief.  That  belief,  of  course,  like  everything 
destined  to  have  a  practical  influence  over  men,  must  be 
positive,  not  negative.  It  must  also  be  scientific,  not  tradi- 
tional or  fictitious.  And  it  must  further  be  human,  in  the 
sense  of  being  sympathetic  and  congener  to  man,  not  ma- 


266  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

terialist  and  homogeneous  with  the  physical  world.  Its 
main  basis  obviously  must  be  social  science,  the  larger,  more 
noble,  and  dominant  part  of  science  in  the  sum.  And  its 
main  instrument  and  guide  will  be  the  history  of  human 
evolution,  which  is  to  physical  evolution  all  that  man  himself 
is  to  the  animal  series.  To  collect  these  suggestions  in  one, 
what  we  have  is  this.  Agnosticism  must  be  absorbed  in  a 
religious  belief,  for  which  it  will  have  cleared  the  ground. 
That  belief  will  necessarily  have  these  characters.  It  will 
be  at  once  positive,  scientific,  human,  sociologic,  and  evolu- 
tionary or  historical. 

These  five  characteristics  are  all,  it  is  plain,  distinctive 
marks  of  the  system  for  the  future  that  Auguste  Comte  pro- 
pounded as  the  religion  of  Humanity.  Indeed,  taken  together, 
they  would  be  a  very  good  description  of  it.  But  it  is  no 
part  of  my  present  purpose  to  pursue  that  topic  further,  or 
to  insist  on  Positivism  as  the  inevitable  solution  of  the  problem. 
The  object  to  which  this  essay  is  confined  is  to  examine  what, 
upon  the  principles  of  Agnosticism  itself,  would  be  the 
natural  development  of  Agnosticism  in  the  future,  when  its 
protest  against  the  assumptions  of  theology  shall  have  done 
its  work,  when  antagonism  to  theology  has  become  an  ana- 
chronism, and  when  the  world  has  realised  how  completely 
religion  has  yet  to  create  its  future.  There  is  no  reason  to 
think  that  thoughtful  Agnostics  would  very  much  dispute 
the  general  line  of  this  reasoning.  Very  many  Agnostics 
already  have  recognised  in  a  general  way,  and  for  a  distant 
future,  some  kind  of  humanitarian  ideal  as  the  ultimate 
basis  of  the  religious  sentiment.  And  this  has  been  done 
most  definitely  by  those  Agnostics  who  are  the  most  interested 
in  social  science,  and  especially  by  those  who  have  the  keenest 
grasp  on  the  laws  of  historical  evolution.  Every  student  of 
social  philosophy,  who  combines  a  knowledge  of  physical 


THE   FUTURE  OF  AGNOSTICISM  26/ 

laws  with  a  dominant  interest  in  history,  is  already  a  hu- 
manitarian in  embryo,  though  he  choose  to  maintain  an  atti- 
tude of  mental  suspense  on  the  religious  problem  as  a  whole. 

Further  than  this  I  have  no  wish  now  to  carry  the  argu- 
ment. I  am  not  in  this  essay  advocating  Positivism,  but  am 
examining  the  future  of  Agnosticism.  Agnosticism,  indeed, 
has  no  future,  unless  it  will  carry  out  its  scientific  principles 
to  their  legitimate  conclusion.  It  offers  no  locus  standi  by 
itself.  As  Charles  Darwin  so  pathetically  tells  us  in  his 
diary,  it  atlords  no  permanent  consolation  to  the  mind,  and 
is  continually  melting  away  under  the  stress  of  powerful 
sympathies.     It  destroys  but  it  does  not  replace. 

That  which  alone  can  take  the  place  of  the  mighty  mys- 
teries and  the  grand  moral  drama  created  by  the  imagination 
of  the  prophets  and  priests  of  old  is  the  final  scheme  of  moral 
and  social  life  which  social  science  shall  finally  elaborate  for 
man,  which  shall  be  the  fruit  of  science  as  a  whole,  with  phys- 
ical science  for  its  foundation  and  social  science  for  its  main 
gospel,  a  scheme  which  shall  be  entirely  positive  and  entirely 
human;  and  its  main  characteristic  will  be,  that  it  explains 
the  history  of  humanity  as  a  whole  and  points  to  the  future 
of  humanity  as  the  inevitable  sequel  of  its  history.  In  what- 
ever form  such  a  view  of  religion  may  approve  itself  to  the 
ages  to  come,  it  will  only  be  Agnostic  in  the  sense  that  it  is 
ready  with  the  Agnostic  answer  to  all  idle  and  irrelevant 
questions. 


XVII 
MR.   HUXLEY'S   CONTROVERSIES 

The  publication  by  Mr.  Huxley  in  one  handsome  volume 
of  the  controversial  essays  he  has  given  to  the  world  within 
seven  years  ^  will  delight  all  admirers  of  his  refreshing  logic, 
and  it  affords  to  students  of  philosophy  a  satisfactory  account 
of  Scientific  Agnosticism,  a  most  interesting  type  of  thought. 
As  one  who  very  deeply  shares  in  that  form  of  thought  (though 
regarding  the  name  Agnostic  to  be  inadequate  as  a  label),  I 
have  looked  with  expectation  for  this  striking  volume.  With 
nine-tenths  of  its  conclusions  I  am  myself  in  sympathy, 
though  I  think  there  is  more  to  be  said  on  the  same  sub- 
ject, and  perhaps  in  another  tone.  But,  so  far  as  it  goes,  it 
could  not  be  better  said,  and  it  will  carry  ultimate  conviction 
to  many  minds  which  were  only  irritated  or  alarmed  by  Mr. 
Huxley's  isolated  raids  on  the  orthodox  camp. 

There  are  passages  in  the  volume  in  which  I  am  myself 
most  strangely  misrepresented;  and  as  to  this  I  shall  ask 
and  obtain  from  Mr.  Huxley  (when  he  hears  me)  handsome 
amends.  But  as  an  old  comrade-in-arms  of  his  for  some 
thirty  years,  I  am  far  more  interested  in  the  success  of  his 
own  Agnostic  position,  so  far  as  it  deals  with  theology  and 
metaphysics  on  the  negative  side.  Let  it  not  be  supposed 
that,  because  he  does  me  some  injustice  personally,  I  fail  to 
rejoice  over  the  great  service  he  renders  to  rational  thought. 

^Essays  upon  Some  Controverled  Questions.  By  Thomas  H.  Huxley, 
F.R.S.     Macmillan  and  Co.,  1892,  8vo.     625  pp. 

268 


MR.    HUXLEY'S   CONTROVERSIES  269 

Some  years  ago,  when  my  old  friend  Sir  J.  Fitzjames  Stephen 
and  I  had  a  round  or  two  (with  regulation  gloves),  he  said 
to  me,  in  his  jolly  way,  "I  meant  to  have  had  another  turn 
with  you,  but  I  called  to  mind  the  old  proverb  —  Dog  should 
not  bite  dog."  If  Mr.  Huxley  sometimes  forgets  this  first 
duty  of  the  well-trained  collie,  I  do  not  forget  it.  And  so 
far  from  wishing  to  bite  him,  I  shall  show  him  presently  that 
the  substantial  agreement  between  us  is  far  larger  than  he 
imagines.  Indeed,  on  the  purely  intellectual  ground,  the 
agreement,  so  far  as  he  goes,  is  complete;  nay  more,  I 
would  claim  him  as  in  a  fair  way  to  become  —  I  will  not 
say  a  Positivist,  for  he  hates  that  and  all  such  names  —  but 
I  will  say  a  colleague  with  me  and  my  friends  in  the  work 
of  popular  scientific  teaching  to  which  we  have  long  devoted 
ourselves. 

As  evidence  of  this,  we  may  cite  the  two  elaborate  and 
suggestive  essays,  the  "Prologue,"  and  the  "Evolution  of 
Theology,"  essays  which  together  occupy  more  than  a  fifth 
of  the  whole  volume,  and  which  are  not  controversial.  In 
the  latter  essay  there  are  some  most  striking  studies  in  the 
history  of  theology,  treated  simply  as  a  "natural  product  of 
the  operations  of  the  human  mind."  All  this  is  excellently 
worked  out  in  the  sense  of  the  fundamental  positive  law  of 
the  passage  of  human  conceptions  from  the  theological  into 
the  positive  stage,  and  is  very  much  in  the  sense  of  those 
speculations  on  the  rise  of  the  theological  spirit  to  which 
Comte  first  gave  a  philosophical  basis.  The  whole  of  the 
essay  on  the  "Evolution  of  Theology"  is  full  of  keen  logic 
and  ingenious  learning;  and  it  happens  10  interest  me  the 
more  that  it  has  a  curious  analogy  to  a  course  of  Lectures  on 
the  Bible,  given  by  Dr.  Bridges,  at  Newton  Hall,  and  ulti- 
mately published  (in  1885).  The  two  series  of  Mr.  Huxley 
and  Dr.  Bridges  entirely  coincide  —  in  the  plea  for  the  high 


270  PHILOSOPHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

place  given  to  the  Hebrew  literature  called  the  "Bible," 
along  with  resolute  treatment  of  it  as  the  equal  of  other 
bibles  and  books ;  in  the  critical  analysis  of  the  Mosaic  and 
Samuelistic  chronicles ;  in  the  explanation  of  the  Jahveh  and 
Elohistic  cults ;  in  the  lessons  drawn  from  the  Book  of  the 
Dead,  and  other  Egyptian  sacred  writings.  The  "Evolution 
of  Theology"  is  a  sterling  piece  of  modem  historical  philoso- 
phy, enriched  by  Mr.  Huxley's  personal  experience  when  he 
was  serving  at  sea  amongst  savage  islanders.  And  he  may 
be  surprised  to  learn  that,  some  time  before  his  own  pieces 
were  published,  our  colleague,  Dr.  Bridges,  had  been  teach- 
ing at  Newton  Hall,  and  had  printed  a  volume  of  lectures 
containing  almost  precisely  the  same  argument  directed  to 
the  same  end,  that  end  being  to  show  that  theology  is  an 
evolutionary  phase  of  the  human  mind,  which  fades  away 
before  positive  science. 

The  "Prologue,"  a  piece  of  fifty-three  pages,  which  has 
not  been  previously  printed,  is  one  of  the  very  best  essays 
in  the  volume  which  explains  the  origin  and  purpose  of  the 
rest.  '  There  is  an  eloquent  and  wise  passage  (pp.  36-37) 
which  puts  in  a  nutshell  the  fundamental  idea  of  Positivism, 
that,  whilst  it  is  an  impertinent  sophism  to  deny  the  possible 
existence  in  the  universe  of  Omniscience  and  Omnipotence, 
yet,  until  human  life  is  longer,  and  our  duties  here  are  less 
pressing,  mankind  had  better  occupy  itself  with  those  things 
of  which  it  has  real  demonstrative  knowledge.  That  is  all 
we  ask ;  and  it  is  the  centre  of  Mr.  Huxley's  position,  as  it  is 
of  ours.  And  he  proceeds  to  lay  down  twelve  cardinal  propo- 
sitions as  axioms  of  all  future  philosophical  and  theological 
speculations.  These  axioms  form  together  a  basis  for  the 
doctrine  of  evolution,  and  they  are  framed  in  a  thoroughly 
cautious  and  comprehensive  spirit.  We,  for  our  parts,  hail 
them  as  essential  truths ;  for,  as  Dr.  Bridges  well  says  in  the 


MR.   HUXLEY'S   CONTROVERSIES 


271 


Lectures  I  have  just  quoted  (p.  18)  —  "The  whole  of  Comte's 
philosophical  structure  is  based  on  the  conception  of  evo- 
lution." 

The  two  eager  evolutionists,  who  show  us  in  twenty  pages 
how  the  entire  animal  world  was  evolved  from  a  primordial 
cell,  may  be  rebuked  by  seeing  the  caution  of  jMr.  Huxley, 
who  says  (in  axiom  8),  "I  think  it  a  conclusion,  fully  justified 
by  analogy,  that,  sooner  or  later,  we  shall  discover  the  remains 
of  our  less  specialised  primitive  ancestors  in  the  strata  which 
have  girdled  the  less  specialised  equine  and  canine  quadru- 
peds." And,  again,  he  says  (axiom  2),  "It  is  a  probable 
conclusion  that,  if  we  could  follow  living  beings  back  to 
their  earliest  states,  we  should  find  them  to  present  forms 
similar  to  those  of  the  individual  germ,  or,  what  comes  to 
the  same  thing,  of  those  lowest  known  organisms  which 
stand  upon  the  boundary  line  between  plants  and  animals. 
At  present,  our  knowledge  of  the  ancient  living  world  stops 
very  far  short  of  this  point."  And  he  speaks  with  the  same 
caution  in  the  EncyclopcEdia  Britannica,  vol.  viii.  How  dif- 
ferent is  the  scientific  reserve  of  this  from  the  wild  guesswork 
of  some  who  call  themselves  disciples  of  Darwin  and  Haeckel ! 

It  is  a  minor  question,  on  which  we  need  not  enlarge, 
whether  Mr.  Huxley  does  not  somewhat  overestimate  the 
probability  of  our  one  day  having  full  demonstration  of  the 
actual  evolution  of  species,  on  any  scale  adequate  to  make  it 
the  general  law  of  our  planetary  life.  No  doubt  Comte, 
whose  scientific  knowledge  was  that  of  sixty  years  ago,  and 
who  knew  the  theory  only  in  the  form  presented  by  Lamarck, 
underestimated  the  probability  of  our  obtaining  any  evidence 
about  the  mutability  and  origin  of  species.  \Vc  have  often 
at  Newton  Hall  shown  that  Comte's  language  was  far  too 
absolute  on  this  and  many  such  points.  But  this  granted, 
and  it  being  understood  on  all  hands  that,  for  purposes  of 


2/2  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

human  histor}%  species  are  practically  permanent,  the  prob- 
abilities as  to  the  origin  of  species  are  matters  of  degree 
only,  which  do  not  affect  the  principle  of  evolution.  All 
that  I  am  now  concerned  with  is  this,  that  no  Agnostic,  no 
Darwinian,  no  Huxleian,  no  physicist  of  any  school,  can 
hold  on  to  the  doctrine  of  Evolution  as  the  key  to  the  changes, 
not  only  of  Nature,  but  of  Man,  more  stoutly  than  does  the 
Positivist. 

As  to  this  point,  it  may  serve  to  make  our  position  clearer 
if  I  remind  Mr.  Huxley  that,  as  early  as  the  year  i860,  I 
hailed  C.  Darwin's  Origin  of  Species  (1859)  ^^  "the  latest 
triumph  of  science";  and  from  that  day  to  this  I  have 
treated  the  absolute  permanence  of  species  as  an  untenable 
dogma.  It  makes  no  difference  to  me  that  Comte,  with 
scientific  data  twenty  or  thirty  years  older,  and  absorbed  as 
he  was  in  the  human  rather  than  the  cosmic  history  of  our 
planet,  considered  the  dogma  (say  in  the  period  1840-45) 
to  be  unshaken.  But  my  friends  and  myself  speaking  at 
Newton  Hall  have  on  many  occasions  shown  what  has  been 
done  in  science  since  then;  and  I  find  that,  lecturing  in  1888, 
I  said  for  myself  that  I  was  not  aware  of  any  scientific  bar  to 
the  hypothesis  that  all  organic  forms  (including  m^en)  may 
have  been  evolved  out  of  some  perfectly  simple  type  or 
types  —  however  little  able  we  are  at  present  to  trace  either 
the  steps  or  the  conditions  of  the  process.  So  I  can  see 
nothing  that  need  divide  us  on  that  point. 

I  shall  not  touch  on  the  Biblical  and  ecclesiastical  polem- 
ics with  which  this  volume  is  so  largely  occupied.  The 
crushing  and  braying  in  a  mortar  of  Biblical  geology.  Mosaic 
cosmogony.  Gospel  miracles,  mediaeval  superstition,  clerical 
arrogance,  casuistical  unveracity,  and  orthodox  muddledom, 
is  most  diverting  and  highly  instructive.  Some  may  think 
that  the  untying  of  this  knot  was  hardly  worth  the  interven- 


MR.   HUXLEY'S   CONTROVERSIES  2/3 

tion  of  Mr.  Huxley's  superior  powers.  And  some  may 
doubt  if  it  were  worth  while  to  make  mincemeat  of  such 
poor  old  idols.  But  perhaps  the  work  has  still  to  be  done. 
The  hold  upon  the  public  mind  of  venerable  superstitions 
must  be  shaken.  And  the  fact  that  bishops,  statesmen, 
Church  congresses,  eminent  Catholics,  principals  and  other 
dignitaries,  should  stake  the  future  of  Christianity  upon  some 
cosmical  myth  or  the  illegality  of  a  herd  of  swine,  is  con- 
clusive proof  that  these  incredible  delusions  still  have  to  be 
pricked.  The  pricking  of  these  mythic  bubbles  and  illicit 
swine  is  a  very  amusing  business.  And  many  readers  will 
find  it  as  pleasant  a  pastime  as  it  evidently  was  to  Mr.  Huxley. 

But  to  me  and  my  friends  the  central  interest  of  Mr.  Hux- 
ley's book  lies  in  his  explanation  of  what  he  means  by  Ag- 
nosticism. The  account  he  gives  of  it  is  clear,  complete,  and 
from  a  philosophical  point  of  view,  quite  satisfactor}'.  He 
has  every  right  to  put  his  own  meaning  on  the  phrase,  since 
he  invented  it  himself  for  his  own  position  (p.  356).  And 
that  position  is,  the  habit  of  mind  to  profess  belief  in  such 
conclusions  only  as  are  demonstrable  by  adequate  evidence. 
So  far  this  is  simply  the  scientific  habit  of  mind.  But  Mr. 
Huxley  goes  on  and  explains  that  he  formed  and  used  the 
term  Agnostic  to  describe  his  own  attitude  of  mind  with 
regard  to  such  questions  as  the  origin  of  the  universe,  Provi- 
dence, the  nature  and  immortality  of  the  soul,  and  the  like. 
Upon  these  high  questions,  on  which  theologies  and  meta- 
physics dogmatise  so  much,  the  Agnostic  makes  no  profes- 
sion, because  he  has  no  evidence.  He  can  find  nothing  of 
a  scientific  kind  to  justify  a  conclusion.  He  neither  asserts 
nor  denies;  he  simply  suspends  his  judgment;  he  does  not 
know;  and  therefore  he  says  nothing. 

This  is  undoubtedly  the  attitude  of  true  philosojjhy  and 
real  science ;  but  it  is  also  the  attitude  of  honesty,  morality, 


274  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

and  spiritual  truthfulness.  It  is  hardly  needful  to  say  that 
it  is  the  attitude  uniformly  insisted  on  by  myself  and  my 
colleagues,  for  it  is  simply  one  side  of  the  medal  of  Posi- 
tivism itself.  Positivism  to  me  and  to  the  rest  of  us  simply 
means,  as  logic,  the  habit  of  resting  on  those  conclusions 
which  are  demonstrable  by  adequate  evidence.  Of  course, 
this  involves  the  refusal  to  profess  any  conclusion  which  is 
not  so  demonstrable.  And  thus  Agnosticism,  in  Mr.  Hux- 
ley's sense,  is  merely  the  converse  or  complement  of  scientific 
Positivism  in  Comte's  sense.  Both  amount  to  the  same 
thing;  the  difference  is  simply  in  the  side  from  which  we 
view  it.  The  one  teacher  says:  "Believe  that  which  you 
can  scientifically  prove."  The  other  says  :  "  Do  not  profess 
to  believe  what  you  cannot  so  prove."  The  difference  in 
these  two  is  simply  one  of  tone,  manner,  or  form.  So  that, 
as  a  simple  matter  of  logic,  I  can  claim  to  be  an  Agnostic  as 
complete  as  Mr.  Huxley,  and  indeed  for  upwards  of  forty 
years  and  long  before  the  term  was  invented. 

Why  then  do  I  not  accept  the  name  of  Agnostic  myself? 
For  precisely  the  same  reason  that  Mr.  Huxley  does  not 
accept  the  name  of  "Infidel."  I  have  no  particular  objection 
to  the  name,  except  that  it  is  inadequate  as  a  description; 
nor  have  I  the  least  hesitation  in  saying  that,  on  the  great 
theological  problems,  the  Agnostic  attitude  is  that  which  I 
adopt.  I  protest  against  the  errors  of  Rome,  but  I  greatly 
object  to  being  called  a  Protestant.  I  dislike  all  spiritualistic 
nonsense ;  but  I  object  to  being  known  as  an  Anti-Spiritualist. 
I  cannot  profess  any  form  of  theology;  but  I  refuse  to  be 
called  an  Atheist.  If  I  am  to  bear  a  label,  I  prefer  it  to 
connote  something  which  I  do  believe  rather  than  something 
which  I  do  not  believe  —  something  about  which  I  feel  sure 
rather  than  something  about  which  I  have  no  opinion.  When 
Mr.  Huxley  is  called   "Infidel,"  he  very  properly  asks  — 


MR.    HUXLEY'S   CONTROVERSIES  275 

"Disbeliever  in  what?"  So  when  we  are  asked  to  call  our- 
selves "Agnostic,"  we  may  fairly  ask  —  "As  not  knowing 
w^hat?"  On  the  whole,  it  is  far  better  to  describe  ourselves 
positively  rather  than  negatively.  When  Mr.  Huxley  speaks 
with  his  clerical  antagonists  in  the  gate,  he  says:  "I  do  not 
know  anything  certain  about  these  high  matters,  and  so  I 
do  not  profess  any  belief."  When  we  Positivists  are  in  the 
same  place,  we  say :  "We  profess  belief  in  a  creed  which  we 
can  fairly  prove."  The  difference  is  not  great;  but  I  much 
prefer  the  Positive  to  the  Agnostic  formula. 

Mr.  Huxley  is  very  careful  to  explain  that  Agnosticism  is 
not  a  creed ;  that  Agnostics  have  no  creed,  and  by  the  nature 
of  the  case,  cannot  have  any,  for  Agnosticism  is  a  method, 
the  rigorous  application  of  a  single  principle.  It  is  not,  he 
says,  a  distinctive  faith ;  it  has  not  the  least  pretension  to 
be  a  religious  philosophy.  And,  controverting  an  article 
of  mine,  he  banters  me,  with  some  humour,  for  having 
pointed  out  how  very  little  Agnosticism  has  to  offer  either  as 
a  distinctive  creed,  or  as  a  religious  philosophy,  or  even  as  a 
stage  in  the  evolution  of  religion.  I  am  afraid  that  I  did  sup- 
pose Agnosticism  to  be  generally  adopted  as  the  symbol,  or 
label,  of  a  certain  religious  philosophy,  or  at  least  as  the 
equivalent  of  a  religious  philosophy ;  that  it  amounted  to  a 
substitute  for  certain  theological  dogmas,  and  formed  a  sort 
of  rough  solution  of  the  theological  problem. 

I  still  believe  that  this  is  the  meaning  of  prominent  Agnos- 
tics, as  it  apparently  was  that  of  C.  Darwin  in  his  auto- 
biography. But  I  am  very  happy  to  withdraw  any  such 
suggestion  in  the  case  of  Mr.  Huxley.  Let  me  point  out  that 
in  treating  of  Agnosticism,  I  did  not  specifically  deal  with 
Mr.  Huxley.  He  has  rather  an  odd  controversial  trick  of 
crying  out  too  often,  "That's  me !"  If  a  preacher  happens 
to  say,  "These  men  of  science  say  so  and  so,"  Mr.  Huxley 


276  PHILOSOPHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

Starts  up  and  cries,  "No,  I  did  not !"  If  the  preacher  says, 
"Evolution  asks  us  to  believe  this  or  that,"  Mr.  Huxley  in- 
terrupts him  with  the  remark,  "I  don't  ask  you  to  believe 
anything!"  However,  I  very  willingly  agree  that,  in  Mr. 
Huxley's  own  view.  Agnosticism  is  not  a  creed,  not  a  dis- 
tinctive faith,  not  a  religious  philosophy,  not  a  stage  in  the 
evolution  of  religion.  And  I  beg  to  tender  him  my  hand- 
some apologies  for  having  suggested  something  about  Ag- 
nosticism which  it  seems  does  not  apply  to  Agnosticism  as 
understood  by  Mr,  Huxley ;  and  as  we  are  both  agreed  that 
such  a  claim,  if  made  by  Agnostics,  would  be  a  very  poor 
claim,  there  remains  no  more  to  be  said. 

Agnosticism  is  not  a  patent  medicine  on  which  Mr.  Hux- 
ley has  a  royalty;  but  it  suits  me  perfectly  to  adopt  his 
version.  But  then  I  would  point  out  what  a  limited  field 
this  Huxleian  Agnosticism  covers ;  how  essentially  negative, 
jejune,  and  provisional  a  resting-place  it  is  in  the  wide  field 
covered  by  the  eternal  problems  of  religion,  philosophy, 
morality,  and  psychology.  Preachers,  moralists,  philoso- 
phers, poets,  educators,  men,  women  and  children,  parents 
and  kinsfolk,  those  who  are  trying  to  comfort,  those  who 
are  seeking  to  amend,  those  who  mourn,  and  those  who  fear 
—  all  around  us  are  ever  crying  out :  What  is  the  relation 
of  Man  to  the  Author  of  the  world?  Is  there,  or  is  there 
not  a  moral  Providence  on  earth  ?  Is  there  a  supreme  power 
here ;  is  it  good,  is  it  wise,  is  it  loving,  or  is  it  indifferent  to 
man  and  alien  to  man  ?  Have  I  an  immortal  soul  and  what 
becomes  of  it  when  I  die?  Does  right  conduct  on  earth 
concern  any  Unseen  Power  at  all :  will  our  good  or  bad  done 
in  the  flesh  be  counted  to  any  of  us  beyond  the  earthly  life? 
These  questions  are  being  asked  in  public  and  in  secret, 
hour  by  hour,  by  all  our  fellow-beings,  often  with  tears  and 
groans  and  agonies  of  hope,  fear,  and  yearning.     And  the 


MR.   HUXLEY'S   CONTROVERSIES  2/7 

one  answer  of  the  Agnostic  is,  "I  have  no  evidence  on  the 
subject,  and  I  believe  nothing  of  which  I  have  no  evidence." 

A  very  sensible  answer  so  far  as  it  goes;  but  it  does  not 
go  far  enough.  A  good  resting-place  for  an  inquirer,  for 
one  who  is  learning,  forming  his  opinion,  and  gathering 
knowledge.  But  it  is  not  wide  enough  for  a  teacher  in  Israel, 
for  a  leader  of  men  and  the  founder  of  a  school  of  thought, 
for  the  vanquisher  of  bishops,  cardinals,  principals,  and  all 
kinds  of  theologians,  lay  and  clerical.  A  man  who  sweeps 
away  with  such  trenchant  logic  and  varied  learning  so  many 
ecclesiastics  and  their  formularies,  so  many  theological  dog- 
mas, who  cuts  down  so  much  philosophical  common  form, 
so  many  popular  traditions  and  prejudices  very  dear  to 
millions,  and  with  so  rich  and  pathetic  a  history,  —  such  a 
man  is  expected  to  have  something  positive  to  supply  as  well 
as  something  negative  to  destroy.  A  review  in  a  philosoph- 
ical organ  wound  up  its  notice  of  this  book  with  the  say- 
ing that,  "Agnosticism  is  an  exhausted  receiver."  And  when 
this  victorious  analysis  has  cut  down  churches,  creeds,  articles, 
sacred  books,  and  hopes  of  heaven,  men  and  women  ask  for 
something  more  than  "an  exhausted  receiver." 

Let  me  make  my  meaning  quite  clear.  Of  course  on  these 
matters  we  give  the  same  answer,  that  we  know  nothing ;  and 
if  Mr,  Huxley  has  nothing  more  to  say  than  that  he  knows 
nothing,  he  is  quite  right  to  say  no  more.  Indeed,  he  would 
be  most  blameworthy  if  he  allowed  it  to  be  supposed  that 
he  would  or  could  say  more.  But  then  he  is  taking  up  a 
very  limited  and  subordinate  ground  in  this  mighty  debate, 
a  ground  which,  as  I  told  him  before,  he  cannot  expect  to 
hold  long.  Agnosticism,  he  says,  has  no  creed,  no  philoso- 
phy of  religion,  has  nothing  to  do  with  religion  more  than 
with  painting.  But  the  great  issue  now  is:  What  is  to  be 
our  creed?     What  is  the  philosophy  of  religion?     What   is 


2/8  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

religion  to  be?  That  is  the  issue  faced  by  all  Mr.  Huxley's 
opponents,  by  bishops,  cardinals,  statesmen,  dignitaries,  and 
in  my  humble  way  by  myself.  And  it  is  the  issue  on  which 
guidance  is  asked  by  millions  and  millions,  and  on  which 
guidance  will  continue  to  be  asked  for  generations  to  come. 
And  Mr.  Huxley's  answer  to  all  is  simply,  "Go  to,  I  am  an 
Agnostic:  I  tell  you  I  know  nothing!"  That  may  satisfy, 
for  a  season,  some  learned  men,  occupied  in  special  research, 
but  it  cannot  satisfy  the  body  of  mankind. 

Mr.  Huxley  has  a  good  deal  of  his  harmless  fun  about  my 
"tripod"  and  the  "prophetical  business"  and  so  forth.  I 
can  assure  him,  it  needs  very  humble  prophetical  gifts  to 
see  that  this  will  not  do.  So  I  tell  him  again,  as  I  told  him 
before,  that  Agnosticism  is  a  stage,  a  negative  stage,  in  the 
evolution  of  religion  —  a  sound,  essential,  inevitable  stage, 
just  as  was  the  agnosticism  of  Descartes  and  of  Bacon,  when 
they  swept  away  the  cobwebs  of  scholastic  and  Aristotelian 
metaphysics,  before  they  reached  the  tabula  rasa  for  their 
own  constructions.  But  they  did  not  stop  at  the  tabula  rasa. 
And  the  world  will  never  rest  at  a  tabula  rasa  or  any  nega- 
tion, or  profession  of  ignorance.  The  world  wants  some- 
thing positive ;  profession  of  knowledge ;  a  creed  if  you  like, 
a  religion,  a  theory  and  a  practice  of  religion.  It  needs  very 
little  familiarity  with  history,  and  social  institutions,  and  the 
spiritual  and  moral  problems  of  society,  to  be  profoundly 
convinced  that  these  eternal  problems  can  never  be  put  off 
until  they  are  satisfactorily  answered,  till  the  moral  and 
spiritual  demands  of  the  human  soul  receive  intelligible  as- 
surance, until  the  great  teachers,  the  moral  guides,  the 
spiritual  censors  of  society  can  provide  us  with  certain  and 
searching  truths  in  which  we  can  trust  with  complete  enthu- 
siasm, until  they  cease  to  put  us  off  with  blank  professions 
of  ignorance. 


MR.   HUXLEY'S   CONTROVERSIES  2/9 

It  was  all  very  well  for  ]Mr.  Darwin  to  say  quietly  that  he 
thought  he  was  on  these  matters  an  Agnostic.  But  Charles 
Darwin  did  not  deal  with  the  philosophy  of  religion,  nor 
engage  in  trenchant  theological  and  biblical  controversies. 
He  never  set  his  back  against  the  rock  like  Roderick  Dhu, 
and  with  his  single  claymore  and  target  met  a  score  of  enemies 

—  premiers,  dukes,  cardinals,  bishops,  preachers,  doctors,  and 
lay  critics  of  all  churches  and  every  school.  To  have  done 
this  implies  the  obligation  of  finding  some  final  solution  to 
problems  of  which  the  doughty  chief  has  destroyed  so  many 
accepted  answers.  Is  there  not  some  consciousness  of  this 
when  Mr.  Huxley  accepts  and  uses  the  term  Agnosticism? 
To  call  oneself  an  Agnostic  may  be  reasonable  enough  when 
challenged  on  some  specific  point.  If  asked  to  translate  a 
passage  of  Genesis  from  the  original,  not  having  Mr.  Hux- 
ley's knowledge  of  the  Semitic  languages,  I  should  admit 
myself  to  be  an  agnostic  as  to  Hebrew.     But  "Agnosticism" 

—  with  a  big  A  —  implies  something  much  more.  It  sug- 
gests a  scheme  of  belief  on  a  set  of  fundamental  dogmas  of 
human  life;  and  so  Mr.  Huxley  seems  to  admit  when  he 
says  (p.  450)  that  the  application  of  it  results  in  the  denial 
or  suspension  of  judgment  on  sundry  great  ecclesiastical 
propositions.  It  is  so  taken  in  popular  language.  And, 
therefore,  it  does  seem  inconsistent  to  say  that  Agnosticism 
is  not  a  creed,  and  has  no  more  to  do  with  religion  than  it 
has  with  painting,  when  we  find  the  author  of  the  term  ad- 
mitting that  it  results  in  the  denial  of,  or  at  least  suspension 
of,  judgment  concerning  all  the  really  crucial  problems  of 
religion  and  of  religious  philosophy. 

Here  is  a  j)ortly  octavo  volume  of  625  pages,  almost  the 
whole  of  which  is  occupied  with  the  Agnostic  view  concerning 
the  Scriptures,  Church  doctrines,  miracles,  and  theology. 
Throughout  it  we  cannot  find  any  distinct  and  positive  assur- 


280  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

ance  as  to  a  moral  Providence,  as  to  the  will  or  rature  of  any 
supreme  Power  or  Force,  as  to  the  state  of  man  or  any  part 
of  man  after  death,  as  to  the  nature  of  sin,  or  as  to  any  pun- 
ishment or  reward  beyond  those  of  this  life.  Yet  these  are 
the  grand  and  perennial  questions  which  the  thinking  world 
to-day  is  asking,  and  which  Mr.  Huxley's  clerical  antagonists 
profess  to  answer.  Now  I  should  like  to  ask  him  a  few  ques- 
tions thereon  myself,  and  I  challenge  him  to  give  me  a  straight- 
forward answer  with  as  httle  chajff  about  "tripods"  and  "pon- 
tiffs" as  he  can  command. 

1.  Has  Mr.  Huxley  himself  any  mental  bias,  pro  or  con, 
with  reference,  let  us  say,  to  Creation,  Providence,  Immor- 
tahty,  and  Future  Punishment? 

2.  Does  he  think  it  of  no  consequence  to  human  life  or  to 
society,  whether  people  have  any  formed  opinion  on  these 
problems  or  not  ?  Are  the  questions  themselves  idle  and 
trivial  from  the  point  of  view  of  morality  and  civilisation  ? 

3.  Does  he  think  that  mankind  will  cease  to  ask  these 
questions,  simply  by  being  told  that  Mr.  Huxley  and  other 
men  of  science  can  give  no  answer  ? 

It  will  not  do  for  him  to  reply,  "I  am  merely  a  'man  of 
science'  [by  which,  by  the  way,  he  seems  always  to  mean  a 
physicist] ;  and  I  am  not  to  be  questioned  about  my  personal 
beliefs."  On  the  contrary,  he  is  a  teacher  in  Israel,  the  founder, 
as  he  claims,  of  "Agnosticism,"  with  a  big  A;  the  Thomas 
Aquinas  of  modern  Agnosticism ;  the  Charles  Martel  of  bish- 
ops, priests,  and  deacons;  the  Athanasius  contra  mundum 
ecclesiasticum.  Before  his  mighty  battle-axe  down  go 
churches,  creeds,  articles,  bibles,  and  the  venerable  super- 
stitions of  the  people.  And  they  cry  aloud  with  one  accord 
to  him,  "What,  then,  do  you  believe  about  these  things; 
what  are  we  to  believe  ? ' '  His  answer  is, ' '  Nothing,  nothing  ! ' ' 
That  is  to  say,  Mr.  Huxley  has  for  many  years  past  devoted 


MR.   HUXLEY'S  CONTROVERSIES  28 1 

much  of  his  great  powers  to  instruct  the  public  on  vital  prob- 
lems which,  above  all  others,  concern  the  happiness  and  virtue 
of  mankind  and  the  progress  of  society,  without  having  any 
conclusion  to  offer  himself,  and  without  making  known  even 
the  bias  of  his  own  mind.  It  needs  neither  a  prophet  nor 
a  conjurer  to  assure  us  of  this :  first,  that  so  purely  negative 
a  proceeding  can  have  but  a  very  partial  success  anywhere; 
and  secondly,  that  in  the  long  run  the  world  will  turn  to  those 
who  have  conclusions.  The  future  must  lie  with  those  who 
have  the  patience  to  work  out  something  that  they  can  know, 
and  will  turn  aside  from  those  whose  religion  is  summed  up 
in  this  —  that  they  do  not  know. 

No  reader  of  mine,  I  hope,  will  fall  into  the  trap  of  imagin- 
ing that  Positivists  have  no  more  to  say  on  these  questions 
than  Agnostics,  for  that  would  be  an  entire  misconception. 
In  the  first  place,  the  essence  of  Positivism  is :  —  Put  your 
trust  in  that  of  which  you  have  scientific  evidence ;  which  is 
a  different  maxim  from  the  converse.  Beware  of  the  super- 
stitions for  which  you  have  no  such  evidence.  It  is  a  different 
thing  from  the  moral,  social,  and  philosophical  point  of  view, 
though,  logically,  it  is  the  converse  of  it ;  and  it  is  a  more  soul- 
satisfying  and  restful  maxim.  The  Positivist  maxim  includes 
and  implies  the  Agnostic  maxim.  But  the  Agnostic  maxim 
does  not  imply  the  Positivist ;  for  sundry  Agnostics  have  got 
so  much  into  the  habit  of  bewaring  of  all  superstition  that  they 
put  their  trust  in  little  evidence  but  that  of  their  own  senses. 
But,  more  than  this,  the  entire  scheme  of  Positivist  education, 
scientific,  moral,  and  religious,  is  directed  to  increase  the 
sense  of  the  paramount  importance  of  positive  knowledge 
and  human  and  mundane  interests,  which  are  vastly  more 
than  can  fill  all  our  possible  hours  of  life.  Up  to  this  point, 
of  course,  the  Agnostic  may  be  willing  also  to  go.  But  the 
Positivist  offers  a  real  and  demonstrative  answer  to  these 


282  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

questions  in  what  is  at  once  a  scientific  and  also  a  religious 
scheme  —  (i)  as  to  the  relation  of  Man  to  the  World;  (2)  as 
to  a  real  and  (relatively)  supreme  Power  over  his  Hfe;  (3)  as 
to  a  human  and  moral  Providence,  truly  guiding  the  destinies 
of  mankind  and  of  each  human  being;  (4)  for  a  real  and 
rational  worship;  and  (5)  as  to  a  subjective  life  after  death. 
All  this  I  need  not  here  enlarge  upon,  for  after  all  I  refer  to  it 
merely  to  guard  against  a  possible  argumentum  ad  hominem, 
and  it  does  not  affect  one  way  or  the  other  the  Agnostic  posi- 
tion. And  for  any  further  explanation  of  the  Positivist  view 
thereon,  I  will  simply  refer  to  my  own  published  writings, 
and  in  particular  to  my  former  volume,  The  Creed  of  a  Lay- 
man. 

Now  I  shall  not  take  up  space  in  noticing  sundry  verbal 
fallacies  in  which  Mr.  Huxley  seeks  to  entangle  me  (pp.  364- 
377,  etc.).  Here  all  his  charming  humour  breaks  out;  and, 
as  I  love  a  jest  myself,  I  do  not  grudge  him  any  fun  that  he 
can  derive  from  chaffing  me  about  pontiffs,  Comtists,  Church 
of  Comte,  popedoms,  adoring  idols,  and  the  like.  It  is  all 
merely  his  ignorance  of  all  that  I  have  been  doing  and  saying. 
And  no  doubt  he  will  be  surprised  to  learn  that  no  one  has 
repudiated  the  name  of  Comtist,  or  the  pontifical  business, 
or  adoring  anything  more  than  I  have  done  myself  at  Newton 
Hall.  It  is  not  misrepresentation  —  such  a  stickler  for  ve- 
racity could  not  misrepresent  —  but  pure  ignorance ;  regret- 
table, singular  ignorance,  and,  as  I  shall  presently  show, 
not  altogether  excusable  ignorance.  As  to  the  fallacies,  I 
cannot  find  that  I  have  made  any.  My  phrases  may  not  have 
been  quite  so  exact  as  they  ought  to  have  been.  But  then 
I  am  not  a  master  of  language  as  Mr.  Huxley  is,  and  he  should 
make  allowances  for  us  inarticulate  bipeds,  if  our  meaning  is 
fairly  clear. 

I  think  he  could  have  understood  me  if  he  had  tried. 


MR.   HUXLEY'S   CONTROVERSIES  283 

He  quarrels  with  me  for  speaking  of  Agnosticism  as  "a  purely 
mental  conclusion,"  and  asks  triumphantly,  Are  any  conclu- 
sions not  mental  ?  Of  course,  I  meant  to  say  that  Agnosticism 
was  a  logical  process,  and  not  a  social  creed  —  and  it  seems 
this  is  exactly  what  Mr.  Huxley  says  it  is.  I  said  that  Ag- 
nosticism was  "the  mere  negation  of  the  physicist."  No! 
says  Mr.  Huxley ;  it  also  destroys  superstitious  ideas  about 
Roman  history  and  the  Homeric  poems.  It  is  surely  a  novel 
idea  that  Wolf  and  Niebuhr  were  the  founders  of  Agnosticism. 
The  world  is  hardly  prepared  for  such  an  extension  of  the 
term.  But  Agnosticism  in  Mr.  Huxley's  hands  seems  to  in- 
clude everything  that  is  wise,  just,  true,  beautiful,  or  good. 
I  spoke  of  "Agnostic  logic"  becoming  a  "canon  of  thought," 
as  I  certainly  think  it  will.  But  the  phrase  has  "bewildered" 
Mr.  Huxley,  who  begs  me  to  clear  up  this  enigmatical  sen- 
tence. Well,  then,  it  means  that  the  reasoning  called  Ag- 
nostic  by  him,  and  called  positive  by  me  (viz.  of  trusting  only 
in  scientific  demonstration),  will  become  a  universal  rule  of 
thinking  to  everybody.  I  quite  agree  that  it  ought,  and  that 
it  will ;  and  I  hold  my  sentence  to  be  sound  in  thought  and 
clear  in  expression.  But  enough;  Mr.  Huxley  and  I  have 
both  much  better  things  to  do  than  to  engage  in  bouts  of  idle 
word-chopping. 

A  far  more  useful  thing  will  be  to  show  him  how  very  much 
nearer  together  we  are  in  substantial  things  than  he  supposes 
and  represents  us  to  be.  The  churchmen  and  dissenters 
have  lately  been  meeting  at  Grindelwald,  under  the  shadow  of 
the  Monk,  the  Giant,  the  Horn  of  Darkness,  and  the  Peak  of 
Horror,  to  vow  eternal  love  and  peace  and  to  cement  an 
alliance  with  a  holy  kiss.  Dogmatism  and  Bibliolatry  have 
kissed  one  another;  and  a  beautiful  Christian  Eircnikon 
has  been  effected.  Wliy  cannot  we  Agnostics  (for  on  the 
negative  side  we  are  all  as  good  Agnostics  as  Mr.  Huxley), 


284  PHILOSOPHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

why  cannot  we  kiss  and  be  friends  ?  I  can  assure  him  that  our 
underlvino;  religious  ideas  are  the  same:  we  have  the  same 
ideals,  the  same  hopes,  and  the  same  ends ;  and  his  fears  about 
our  ritualism,  our  popery,  our  Comtism,  our  idolatry,  are 
figments  without  any  foundation  at  all.  I  have  hitherto  been 
trying  to  show  how  negative,  arid,  and  entirely  uninspiring  a 
thing  Agnosticism  must  be,  when  regarded  as  covering  the 
field  of  religious  beliefs  and  hopes.  Mr.  Huxley  replies  to 
us  that  Agnosticism,  as  he  understands  it,  is  simply  a  logical 
process  and  does  not  pretend  to  cover  the  field  of  philosophy 
or  religion.  So  be  it!  But  in  the  present  volume  we  may  trace 
indications  of  some  positive  belief  of  his  own  on  the  religious 
problems.  They  are  put  in  rather  a  guarded,  tentative,  al- 
most a  shy  manner,  but  still  they  are  distinct  enough.  Now  it 
may  surprise  him,  but  it  is  true,  that  these  essential  ideas  of 
his  about  religion  are  practically  those  of  myself  and  my 
friends.  We  put  them  in  a  somewhat  more  systematic  way. 
Our  evolution  has  reached  a  stage  beyond  Agnosticism. 
But  (I  say  it  as  a  bond  of  peace  and  union  and  not  in  any 
spirit  of  offence)  Mr,  Huxley  is  a  rudimentary  Positivist. 
Of  course  he  is  more  than  a  rudimentary  Positivist  on  the 
scientific  and  philosophical  field;  but  I  mean  that  on  the 
religious  ground  he  is  a  rudimentary  Positivist,  inasmuch  as 
he  professes  at  bottom  our  own  essential  beliefs.  His 
twelfth  canon  ("Prologue,"  p.  48)  is  this,  "The  highest  con- 
ceivable form  of  human  society  is  that  in  which  the  desire  to 
do  what  is  best  for  the  whole,  dominates  and  limits  the  action 
of  every  member  of  that  society."  That  is  simply  what  we 
mean  by  the  Religion  of  Humanity :  neither  more  nor  less. 
And  the  canons  9,  10,  11,  and  12  are  simply  propositions  in 
the  same  sense.  //  all  this  is  pure  Agnosticism,  then  surely 
Agnosticism  is  something  more  than  a  logical  process,  and  it 
has  more  to  do  with  religion  than  it  has  with  painting.     He 


MR.   HUXLEY'S   CONTROVERSIES  285 

says  (p.  366)  that  religion  "ought  to  mean  simply  the  reverence 
and  love  for  the  ethical  ideal,  and  the  desire  to  realise  that 
ideal  in  life,  which  every  man  ought  to  feel."  Well,  that  is 
exactly  what  I  mean  by  religion.  Worship  of  Humanity  has 
to  me  no  other  sense  or  meaning.  I  mean  no  more  than 
reverence  and  love  for  all  that  is  good  and  great  in  the  social 
organism.  A  page  or  two  further  on  comes  this  remarkable 
passage  (p.  371):  — 

That  a  man  should  determine  to  devote  himself  to  the  service  of 
humanity  —  including  intellectual  and  moral  self-culture  under  that 
name;  that  this  should  be,  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  word,  his  religion 
—  is  not  only  an  intelligible,  but,  I  think,  a  laudable  resolution.  And 
I  am  greatly  disposed  to  believe  that  it  is  the  only  religion  which  will  prove 
itself  to  be  unassailably  acceptable  so  long  as  the  human  race  endures. 

But  this  is  simply  all  we  ask  or  profess.  The  service  of 
humanity,  including  mental  and  moral  self-culture,  is  the  only 
religion  which  will  permanently  endure.  So  says  Mr.  Hux- 
ley the  Agnostic  —  so  say  we  all.  This  is  precisely  how  we 
describe  the  religion  of  humanity  —  the  Service  of  Man,  as 
our  colleague,  J.  Cotter  ]Morison,  well  named  it.  We  mean 
nothing  further;  we  have  no  reserve,  or  amerg /(cwseg.  This 
is  the  belief  and  the  resolution  which  we  Positivists,  in  New- 
ton Hall  or  in  Paris,  profess,  explain,  teach,  and  practise. 
Mr.  Huxley  poked  some  mild  fun  at  me  for  expressing  an 
opinion  about  the  future  of  Agnosticism,  and  talked  of  my 
"tripod"  and  prophetic  assumption.  And  here  he  mounts 
the  tripod  with  a  vengeance  and  prophesies  as  to  the  future  of 
religion  "so  long  as  the  human  race  endures."  I  have  never 
gone  so  far  as  that.  I  simply  say  that  the  service  of  humanity 
will  serve  as  the  religion  of  many  generations  to  come.  Saul 
is  indeed  amongst  the  prophets!  And  when  the  "pontid" 
of  Agnosticism  mounts  his  evolutionary  tripod,  it  is  to  pro- 


286  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

claim  in  prophetic  strain  that  the  Religion  of  Humanity  will 
triumph,  whilst  the  human  race  endures. 

Mr,  Huxley's  characteristic  modesty  leads  him  to  under- 
value his  own  gifts  of  prophecy.  When  he  introduces  (in  the 
"Prologue,"  p.  40)  his  own  twelve  canons  or  "body  of  estab- 
lished truths,"  as  he  calls  them  (and  I  think  the  proposi- 
tions are  all  sensible  and  useful  enough),  he  tells  us  "that  all 
future  philosophical  and  theological  speculations  will  have  to 
accommodate  themselves  to  some  such."  Surely  that  is  a  little 
bold,  though  I  say  it  as  a  partisan  of  his  views  myself.  Comte 
has  been  charged  (and  I  am  free  to  admit  not  without  reason) 
with  excessive  confidence  in  his  own  predictions.  But  I 
doubt  if  there  is  anything  in  Comte's  most  astounding  claims 
that  quite  comes  up  to  the  tremendous  prophecy  that  all  fu- 
ture philosophical  and  theological  speculations  will  have  to 
lie  on  the  Procrustean  bed  of  Mr.  Huxley's  twelve  canons 
about  primordial  germs,  the  Mesozoic  epoch.  Quaternary 
man,  the  evolution  of  morality,  and  so  forth.  The  twelve 
canons  are  good ;  but  I  bow  my  head  in  awe  before  such  sub- 
lime confidence  in  their  future. 

We  will  hold  in  Newton  Hall  a  special  conclave,  wherein 
I  will  abdicate  and  cede  to  him  my  prophetic  tripod  and  my 
triple  tiara. 

No  doubt  he  thinks  that  a  gulf  separates  him  from  us; 
but  that  is  his  mistake.  He  does  not  know  us,  and  he  has  run 
off  with  some  ribald  jest  he  has  read  in  a  journal.  After 
the  passage  I  have  just  cited  (from  p.  371)  comes  this,  "But 
when  the  Positivist  asks  me  to  worship  Humanity  —  that  is 
to  say,  to  adore  the  generalised  conception  of  men  as  they  ever 
have  been  and  probably  ever  will  be  —  I  must  reply  that  I 
could  just  as  soon  bow  down  and  worship  the  generalised  con- 
ception of  a  wilderness  of  apes,"  and  so  forth.  Well,  no 
Positivist  ever  did  ask  anybody  to  adore  anything  or  anybody, 


MR.    HUXLEY'S  CONTROVERSIES  287 

to  bow  down  to  anything  or  anybody,  to  worship  any  general- 
ised conception  of  men.  The  whole  idea  is  a  hallucination, 
a  piece  of  horseplay  or  caricature  invented  by  ubiquitous  press 
jesters,  and  swallowed  as  truth  by  the  stem  Agnosticism  of 
Mr.  Huxley. 

And  he  talks  about  "deifying"  men,  about  "divinity 
hedging  no  man,"  about  no  spark  of  "divinity"  in  an  indi- 
vidual, the  "god-hke  splendour"  of  humanity,  the  "vacant 
shrine"  of  Christ,  etc.,  etc.  All  this  is  mere  caricature. 
For  years  and  years,  so  far  as  I  am  concerned,  I  have  pub- 
licly abjured  and  protested  against  the  name  of  "Comtist," 
such  phrases  as  "the  religion,"  or  "Church,"  or  "doctrines" 
of  Comte,  any  idea  of  "adoring"  anything  or  anybody,  any- 
thing about  the  divinity,  or  divine  attributes,  or  ideal  perfection 
of  humanity  or  anything  human,  and,  in  particular,  against 
the  idea  that  we  are  expected  to  believe  a  thing  because  it  is 
so  said  in  Comte's  books.  I  have  said  a  thousand  times  that 
by  "religion"  I  mean  (as  Mr.  Huxley  does)  the  service  of  hu- 
manity; by  "humanity"  the  permanent  and  collective  power 
of  the  human  organism :  by  "positivism"  the  habit  of  trust- 
ing to  scientific  demonstration  and  the  general  good  of  the  race: 
by  "worship"  the  sense  of  gratitude,  love,  and  reverence 
which  men  feel  for  their  country,  their  family,  their  benefac- 
tors —  somewhat  higher  in  degree,  but  not  differing  in  kind. 
All  this  nonsense  about  "adoring"  Humanity  is  merely  the 
sneer  of  some  idle  curate  in  the  Saturday  Review. 

I  will  now  take  leave  to  prove  this  by  citing  chapter  and 
verse;  and  I  am  forced  to  follow  Mr.  Huxley's  example  of 
troubling  the  reader  with  some  autobiographic  facts  and  ex- 
tracts from  my  own  published  discourses.  I  cannot  help  it.  Mr. 
Huxley  constantly  criticises  me  by  name,  cites  pieces  of  mine, 
argues  against  them,  and  then  holds  me  up  to  public  ridicule 
as  pontiff,  prophet,  general  humbug,  and  counterpart  of  Joe 


288  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

Smith,  the  Mormon.  When  I  wrote  on  Agnosticism  I  did 
not  address  Mr.  Huxley;  but  in  his  essay  with  that  title  he 
names  and  he  quotes  me,  and  I  believe  I  am  the  only  Positiv- 
ist  whom  he  does  name  or  quote  throughout  his  present  book. 
It  is  consequently  my  teaching,  my  words,  and  my  writings 
which  are  attacked,  and  it  is  I  who  am  supposed  to  behave 
in  the  grotesque  way  he  describes.  It  will  not  do  for  him 
to  cite  Comte,  because,  as  I  say,  I  am  not  bound  by  Comte's 
books,  nor  by  his  injunctions.  Nor  will  it  do  to  quote  others 
whom  he  may  choose  to  call  "Comtists."  He  has  charged 
me  with  doing  and  saying  certain  absurd  things.  And  I  shall 
now  proceed  to  convince  him,  as  he  is  an  honourable  and  vera- 
cious man,  that  he  therein  unwittingly  does  me  grievous  wrong. 
I  am  no  "Comtist."  I  wholly  repudiate  the  phrase,  and 
regard  it  as  an  unfair  nickname.  And  that  because  I  and 
those  who  work  with  me  refuse  to  be  bound  by  Comte's 
writings  as  such,  much  as  we  value  the  principles  they  contain. 
For  instance,  in  1885,  I  was  asked  to  prepare  an  address  for 
the  Positivists  of  New  York,  and  these  are  some  sentences 
extracted  from  that  which  I  sent :  — 

Positivism  means  the  acceptance,  upon  conviction,  of  positive  truths, 
all,  at  any  time,  capable  of  demonstration.  Positivism  is  a  French 
word,  meaning  the  habit  of  trusting  to  what  has  been  and  can  be  proved. 
To  translate  it  freely,  it  means  the  scientific  faith ;  the  habit  of  Testing 
our  lives  and  our  beliefs  on  solid,  provable  certainties  that  we  can  under- 
stand and  teach  to  others.  Hence  it  excludes  all  blind  trust  in  authority, 
and  all  cut-and-dried  formulas. 

Now  I  ask  Mr.  Huxley  if  this  "allocution"  has  "the  Papal 
flavour"  about  it.     Again,  I  wrote  further  on :  — 

We  do  not  ask  a  convinced  Positivist  to  accept  all  that  may  be  found 
in  Comte's  writings.  That,  we  think,  would  be  treason  against  Positivism 
and  scientific  proof.     It  will  be  enough  if  a  convinced  Positivist  intelli- 


MR.   HUXLEY'S  CONTROVERSIES  289 

gently  accepts  the  great  Positivist  precepts,  with  all  that  they  imply. 
In  the  moral  and  essential  sphere,  "Live  for  others,"  live  in  active 
employment  of  your  social  faculties  and  instincts.  In  the  intellectual 
world,  rest  in  "Order  and  Progress,"  —  that  is,  rest  in  demonstrative 
knowledge  and  in  view  of  human  improvement.  In  the  political  and 
social  sphere,  "Live  without  concealment,"  i.e.  make  your  hfe  a  pattern 
to  your  neighbour,  and  seek  to  guide  him  through  his  reason  and  never 
to  effect  a  good  end  by  secrecy,  fraud,  or  conspiracy. 

Does  Mr.  Huxley  object  to  this  teaching,  docs  he  find 
nothing  but  Comtism  and  "eviscerated  papistry"  therein? 
Now  let  him  note  that  this  of  mine  was  written  before  the 
earliest  of  those  controversial  essays  of  his ;  it  was  signed  by 
me  as  President  of  the  Positivist  Committee  of  London,  and 
it  has  been  printed  and  sold  at  Newton  Hall  by  our  body,  and 
has  been  scattered  broadcast  up  and  down  the  country. 

Again,  I  was  asked  in  1889  to  address  the  Positivists  of  Man- 
chester.    I  said :  — 

Our  movement  is  very  far  from  taking  Comte's  abstruse  works  in 
some  fifteen  volumes  and  treating  them  as  a  new  revelation  with  a 
verbal  inspiration  and  bibhcal  authority.  Nothing  could  be  more  con- 
trary to  the  Positive  spirit  than  to  accept  anything  on  the  authority  of 
any  man,  apart  from  scientific  verification.  As  we  cannot  pretend  to 
have  scientific  verification  for  all  that  may  be  read  in  these  fifteen 
volumes  (a  large  part  of  which  I,  myself,  regard  as  mere  illustrations 
of  a  theory),  we  are  very  careful  to  limit  ourselves  at  present  to  that 
which  we  feel  we  can  adopt  on  conviction;  and  that  amounts,  in  my 
case,  to  a  set  of  general  leading  ideas. 

I  said  it  was  an  impudent  quackery  to  pretend  that  Posi- 
tivism was  a  discovery  of  the  nineteenth  century;  that,  on 
the  contrary,  it  was  and  had  long  been  the  practical  faith  of 
millions,  and  that  it  sought  merely  to  systematise  the  inevit- 
able tendency  of  human  evolution.     I  went  on  to  say :  — 

We  do  not  believe  in  Auguste  Comte:   we  believe  in  the  assurances 
u 


290  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

of  philosophy  and  science.  We  do  not  worship  Positivism.  We  wor- 
ship, or  to  use  plain  English,  we  submit  ourselves  reverently  to  Hu- 
manity. When  science  has  established  the  real  position  of  Humanity 
on  earth,  and  has  indicated  the  tendency  of  its  progress  and  the  condi- 
tions of  its  advance,  we  will  cheerfully  adopt  them.  In  the  meantime 
our  Positivism  teaches  us  (in  the  intellectual  sphere)  to  accept  no  verity 
for  which  demonstration  is  not  offered,  and  (in  the  moral  sphere)  to 
profess  no  worship  for  any  power  which  we  cannot  with  our  brains 
understand,  and  which  we  cannot  with  our  hearts  honour,  sympathise 
with,  and  in  a  human  sense  love  and  feel  for. 

I  have  now  been  for  very  many  years  President  of  the  Posi- 
tivist  Committee  of  London ;  and  such  is  the  language  I  have 
uniformly  held  to  our  body  at  Newton  Hall,  and  especially 
in  a  series  of  annual  addresses  on  the  first  of  each  year.  For 
instance,  I  said  (ist  January  1887) :  — 

How  vain  are  the  criticisms  and  prophecies  with  which  Comte's 
teaching  was  met  years  ago !  Cut  and  dried  systems,  arid  formulas, 
fantastic  rites !  —  they  used  to  say.  Where  is  there  anything  fantastic, 
obscurantist,  cut  and  dried  here?  There  is  nothing  like  a  sect  here. 
We  repudiate  the  very  name  of  Comtists ;  assuredly  we  do  not  swallow 
down  Comte's  voluminous  writings  in  the  bulk.  Four  times  in  these 
last  years,  on  the  anniversary  of  his  death  thirty  years  ago,  four  of  us, 
one  after  the  other,  have  tried  to  sum  up  the  meaning  of  his  teaching, 
the  value  of  his  life.  Four  times  the  speaker  has  said  that  Comte's 
life  is  in  no  sense  perfect,  not  at  all  to  us  an  object  of  worship  and  imi- 
tation, that  it  is  the  soul  and  essence  of  his  teaching  which  binds  us  to- 
gether, and  not  a  servile  acceptance  of  his  words,  or  a  lifeless  caricature 
of  his  Utopia.  Comte  was  a  poet  and  an  idealist,  as  well  as  a  philoso- 
pher, and  we  are  not  going  to  turn  his  poetry  into  formulas,  and  his 
ideals  into  a  Pharisaical  Targiun. 

In  1888  I  tried  to  explain  what  I  meant  by  a  religion  of 
Humanity.  I  said  that  it  would  be  wholly  unhke  orthodox 
Catholicism  or  orthodox  Puritanism,  but  in  some  ways  more 
like  the  religion  of  the  ancients,  i.e.  more  what  we  call  morality, 


MR.    HUXLEY'S   CONTROVERSIES  29 1 

more  social  than  personal,  more  civic  than  domestic,  more  prac- 
tical than  mystical.  It  would  savour  more  of  the  tone  of 
mind  taught  by  Socrates,  Confucius,  and  Marcus  Aurelius, 
than  that  taught  by  Augustine  and  Aquinas,  Luther  and  Cal- 
vin. In  1890  I  protested  against  any  one  attempting  to  place 
Positivism  "on  a  purely  Comtist  basis,"  and  against  any  slid- 
ing into  a  Pharisaical  attention  to  the  "mint  and  anise  of  the 
formal  Comtist  ritual."  Again,  in  1891,  I  pointed  out  that 
"the  service  of  Man  does  not  mean  the  adoration  of  Man,  nor 
the  substitution  of  a  human  God  for  a  celestial  God,  any  more 
than  the  essence  of  religion  implies  the  worship  of  a  Supreme 
and  Perfect  Being  at  all."  "It  is  mere  ignorance  or  per- 
versity," I  said,  "which  imagines  that  our  sole  object  here  is 
to  set  up  the  worship  of  a  human  God."  I  explained  what  is 
meant  by  the  word  worship.  Of  course,  Comtc's  word  is 
culte,  which  implies  "regard  for,"  as  culte  des  morts,  culte  de 
la  mere,  de  lafemme,  etc.,  etc.  I  said,  "What  by  a  mislead- 
ing Gallicism  is  sometimes  spoken  of  as  the  '  Worship  of  Hu- 
manity,' means  simply  to  us,  not  the  mystical  adoration  of  an 
abstract  idea,  but  the  constant  cultivation  of  an  intelligent  rev- 
erence for  all  that  has  been  good  and  great  on  earth. ^^  This  is 
almost  exactly  what  Mr.  Huxley  says  (p.  366)  is  his  own  idea 
of  religion,  "reverence  and  love  for  the  ethical  ideal."  And  it 
is  this  which  compels  me  to  claim  Mr.  Huxley  as  a  (rudi- 
mentary) worshipper  of  Humanity.  He  does  not  like  the 
phrase,  but  he  and  I  mean  the  same  thing. 
In  my  discourse  of  1891  I  went  on  to  say :  — 

We  have  here  no  head,  no  director,  no  ritual,  no  test  of  orthodoxy, 
no  rigid  scheme  of  behef  or  of  worship.  We  ask  no  formal  submission 
to  any  book,  or  to  any  single  teacher  whatever.  .  .  .  Where,  in  the 
ten  years  that  this  hall  has  been  at  work,  has  any  sign  of  such  things 
[as  priestcraft,  or  revised  Popery]  been  seen?  Has  any  one  from  this 
platform  ever  held  out  to  you  the  writings  of  Comte  as  a  new  Bible? 


292  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

Has  any  one  of  us  aspired  to  the  spiritual  tyranny  of  a  priest?  Has 
any  one  of  us  ever  presented  our  faith  to  you  in  the  light  of  Comtism  — 
I  mean  the  deification  of  any  man,  or  the  rigid  acceptance  of  any  set 
of  doctrines  and  practices?  Has  any  one  who  frequents  this  hall  ever 
been  expected  to  avow  his  conformity  to  any  articles  of  any  creed? 
Has  any  man,  or  any  woman,  ever  been  pressed  to  submit  to  any  order, 
to  conform  to  anything  that  they  did  not  heartily  believe,  to  keep  silence 
when  they  wished  to  speak,  or  to  do  what  they  did  not  approve  ? 

Now,  that  is  the  language  I  have  held  to  our  body  in  New- 
ton Hall.  Where  is  the  "Papistry,"  where  the  "pontiff," 
where  the  "allocutions,"  where  is  the  "ecclesiasticism,"  the 
Mormonism,  the  "  Anthropolatry,"  with  which  Mr.  Huxley 
charges  me?  Do  monks.  Catholics,  or  ecclesiastics  of  any 
Church  use  this  language?  Could  any  theological  Church 
venture  on  it?  Where  is  "Pope  and  pagan  rolled  into  one" 
in  these  addresses?  And  let  me  point  out  that  what  I  have 
quoted  are  all  formal  addresses  to  various  Positivist  groups, 
given  by  me  as  President  of  the  Committee,  published  and 
distributed  broadcast  at  Newton  Hall  as  expositions  of  our 
views.  They  are  perfectly  consistent  with  all  that  I  have 
ever  uttered  for  years  past,  and  I  challenge  Mr.  Huxley  to 
point  out  discourses  of  mine  to  the  contrary.  These  pub- 
lished pieces  of  mine  are  all  long  anterior  to  his  present  book, 
and  many  of  them  were  anterior  to  his  reprinted  attack  on  me, 
first  made  in  February  1889.  And  I  will  add  that  my  dis- 
courses are  collected  in  volumes  in  several  public  libraries, 
and  certainly  in  two  frequented  by  Mr,  Huxley. 

And  what  is  Mr.  Huxley's  defence  for  so  strangely  misrep- 
resenting me?  I  cannot  say;  but  I  hope  he  will  not  at- 
tempt to  quote  Comte,  or  some  obscure  "crank"  who  may 
call  himself  a  "Comtist."  Comte's  writings,  for  the  present, 
have  nothing  to  do  with  it ;  for,  as  I  show,  they  are  no  gospel 
for  me  or  my  friends.     I  have  publicly  protested  against  any 


MR.    HUXLEY'S   CONTROVERSIES  293 

"mint  and  anise  of  a  Comtist  ritual" ;  I  have  never  held  any 
other  language.  How  does  he  know  I  am  a  "Comtist,"  or 
have  anything  to  do  with  any  "Church  of  Comte"  ?  I  hope 
he  will  not  say  that  I  am  angry,  as  he  usually  does  if  one  of 
his  opponents  objects  to  being  called  a  bad  name.  Would 
he  be  angry  if  I  wrote  a  book  about  him  as  an  orthodox 
"Haeckelist,"  and  suggested  that  he  kept  in  his  back-yard  a 
stuflfed  gorilla,  which  he  was  wont  to  reverence  as  his  primor- 
dial ancestor?  The  question  for  the  moment  is  not  what 
Comte  has  said,  but  what  I  have  said.  Mr.  Huxley  charges 
me  with  these  things,  and  the  body  to  which  I  belong.  Why 
am  I  a  "pontiff"  more  than  he  is?  I  express  my  views; 
so  does  he.  Why  are  my  essays  in  The  Fortnightly  Review 
"allocutions,"  whilst  his  are  Essays  on  Some  Controverted 
Questions  ?  Why  am  I  a  prophet  for  saying  that  Agnosticism 
as  a  religious  scheme  will  fail,  whilst  he  can  lay  down  twelve 
canons  for  all  future  speculations? 

Need  he  trouble  himself  about  the  number  of  my  "dis- 
ciples"? Have  I  "disciples,"  am  I  a  "disciple,"  more  than 
he?  How  many  score  of  Huxleyites  are  there  in  the  three 
kingdoms  ?  How  many  disciples  has  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  ? 
I  trust  that  we  all  of  us  exercise  some  influence  in  spheres 
wider  than  we  see  or  know.  But  the  number  of  persons  to- 
day inclined  to  group  themselves  into  schools  or  followings 
of  any  kind  is  small.  And  as  to  Positivists,  we  care  for  in- 
fluence, not  for  disciples.  The  ceaseless  grinning  of  the  comic 
and  clerical  press,  and  the  bow-wow  of  great  controversialists 
does  rather  terrify  quiet  people  from  the  doors  of  Newton 
Hall.  But,  putting  aside  the  mere  hacks  who  cadge  about 
the  Royal  Society  and  the  science  press,  I  daresay  we  can 
show  asmany  "disciples,"  if  that  is  needed,  as  Mr.  Huxley. 
When  will  he  preside  at  the  next  grand  consistory  of  the  Ag- 
nostic Church? 


294 


PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 


I  do  not  imply  that  Mr.  Huxley  had  any  wish  to  present 
me  to  the  public  in  a  light  so  utterly  untrue ;  but  I  do  feel  that 
he  has  been  somewhat  careless,  and  has  not  kept  in  view  all 
the  twelve  canons  of  Agnostic  veracity.  What  did  he  know, 
what  did  he  try  to  find  out  about  my  sayings  and  doings  at 
Newton  Hall  ?  Little,  I  fear,  but  what  he  picked  out  of  casual 
and  usually  malicious  paragraphs  in  the  press.  Newton  Hall 
is  open  to  all  men ;  piles  of  literature  he  on  its  tables  at  cost 
price.  The  annual  reports  of  the  body  and  our  own  addresses 
are  collected  in  volumes,  and  are  in  many  public  libraries. 
Did  Mr.  Huxley  read  these  before  he  came  forward  to  hold 
me  up  as  a  sort  of  Mormon  prophet  and  Comtist  hierophant  ? 
When,  in  1889,  he  first  attacked  me,  I  was  so  much  pleased 
by  his  gallant  onslaught  on  superstition,  and  so  thankful  to 
note  his  latent  profession  of  a  human  and  ethical  religion, 
that  I  let  any  public  reply  stand  over.  I  spoke  to  him  pri- 
vately, told  him  that  he  had  mistaken  my  attitude,  and  he 
seemed  glad  to  recognise  that  we  were  not  so  far  apart  after 
all.  And  now  I  find  him,  in  1892,  reprinting  all  these  pre- 
posterous caricatures  about  myself,  though  I  showed  him  how 
much  he  was  mistaken  in  his  facts,  and  he  has  had  abundant 
opportunity  to  learn  that  he  had  been.  Oh !  Agnosticism, 
with  thy  ethical  ideal  of  veracity,  what  things  are  done  in  thy 


name  ! 


I  know  Mr.  Huxley  does  not  mean  to  be  unkind  — 
indeed,  for  thirty  years  past  we  have  been  on  most  friendly 
terms,  and  he  prefaces  his  annihilation  of  me  with  some  very 
handsome  words.  And  I  am  sure  that  he  could  not  willingly 
be  unfair.  But  with  all  his  noble  qualities  he  has  his  antipa- 
thies, and  there  are  one  or  two  names  which  seem  to  send  him 
dancing  mad.  Worse  than  Mr.  Gladstone  —  worse  than 
General  Booth  —  is  Auguste  Comte.  He  has  a  standing 
quarrel  with  this  philosopher ;  and  the  idea  of  any  one  having 


MR.    HUXLEY'S  CONTROVERSIES  295 

part  or  parcel  in  his  opinions  affects  Mr.  Huxley  so  acutely 
that  he  can  barely  control  himself  within  the  twelve  canons  of 
scientific  Agnosticism.  Now  I  am  not  going  to  argue  with  him 
about  Comte.  I  should  like  to  do  so,  and  if  he  will  name 
place  and  time,  I  will  gladly  attempt  to  convert  him;  but  for 
the  moment  there  is  neither  space  nor  opportunity.  Comte 
was  a  philosopher,  not  a  scientific  specialist,  and  his  know- 
ledge, of  course,  was  that  of  fifty  years  ago.  But  his  philo- 
sophic power  was  recognised  by  his  greatest  contemporaries, 
and  has  been  fully  admitted  by  hostile  critics  in  England, 
such  as  Mill,  Herbert  Spencer,  G.  H.  Lewes,  Jolin  Morley, 
and  others  of  philosophic  competence,  far  greater  than  Mr. 
Huxley's.  But  into  whatever  blunders  Comte  may  have 
fallen,  and  he  could  not  have  fallen  into  bigger  blunders 
than  did  Aristotle,  Bacon,  Descartes,  or  Leibnitz,  in  their  own 
day,  and  however  extravagant  to  Agnostics  may  seem  his 
Utopia  of  1852  —  the  point  now  in  issue  is,  How  do  I  and  those 
I  am  associated  with  present  Positivism  to-day;  and  is  it  a 
more  scientific,  more  rational,  more  philosophic  scheme  than 
Agnosticism  pure  and  simple? 

Mr.  Huxley  seems  to  think  the  matter  is  concluded  by  citing 
French  books  forty  years  old,  by  which  I  say  I  am  not  bound ; 
and  when  he  has  found  some  statements  in  Comte  which  do 
not  square  with  the  assumed  discoveries  of  modem  physicists, 
he  proclaims  to  the  world  that  Positivists  are  sworn  enemies 
of  science,  and  practise  a  mixture  of  mummery  and  Papistry. 
I  invite  the  most  rigorous  application  of  Agnostic  canons  to 
the  following  facts.  M.  Pierre  Lafiitte,  a  well-known  teacher 
of  science  in  Paris,  was  the  pupil  and  is  the  successor  of  Au- 
guste  Comte,  recognised  as  such  by  the  only  organised  body 
of  Positivists  in  France.  For  thirty  years  he  has  taught  the 
sciences  to  large  audiences  in  Paris.  Recently  the  Govern- 
ment, on  the  advice  of  M.  Renan,  founded  a  new  chair  in 


296  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

the  College  de  France  for  the  History  of  the  Sciences.  M. 
Laffitte  was  appointed  the  Professor.  There  was  much 
opposition  to  the  foundation  of  the  chair,  and  to  filhng  it  with 
an  avowed  Agnostic ;  but  not  one  word  was  uttered  to  dispute 
the  eminent  scientific  attainments  of  M.  Laffitte.  The  found- 
ing of  such  a  chair  was  challenged  in  the  Senate,  wherein  sit 
many  men  of  high  academic  position,  more  or  less  alien  to  any 
religious  teaching  of  Positivism.  The  Minister  in  the  Senate 
read  a  long  letter  from  M.  Renan,  and  declared  that,  by  the 
advice  of  eminent  scientists,  he  had  appointed  M.  Laffitte  as 
being  the  most  competent  man  he  could  find.  And  there 
was  a  chorus  of  approval  of  his  choice,  M.  Laffitte  being  recog- 
nised as  the  man  naturally  fitted  for  such  a  post,  and,  indeed, 
as  the  only  person  specially  quahfied  or  suggested.  M. 
Laffitte  for  years  continued  his  teaching  in  science  along 
with  his  colleagues  —  such  as  Dr.  Robinet,  Dr.  Delbet,  Dr. 
Dubuisson,  Dr.  Hillemand,  Dr.  Clement,  all  well-known 
physiologists  and  men  of  science  in  Paris,  and  with  scores  of 
other  men  of  high  academic  reputation.  Does  this  look  like 
being  the  enemies  of  science?  Or  are  the  Government,  Sen- 
ate, and  academies  of  France  bent  on  promoting  "bad 
science  and  eviscerated  Papistry"? 

I  turn  to  our  English  body.  The  person  who  preceded 
me  as  Chairman  of  the  Positivist  Committee  is  Dr.  Bridges, 
formerly  a  physician  of  the  highest  promise,  and  subsequently 
an  important  public  servant.  The  speaker  chosen  in  1892 
by  the  College  of  Physicians  to  deliver  the  Harveian  oration 
was  Dr.  Bridges.  He  has  been  for  years  one  of  our  principal 
teachers  at  Newton  Hall,  along  with  others,  physiologists, 
chemists,  mathematicians,  whose  profession  it  is  to  teach  one 
or  other  of  the  sciences  in  different  institutions  in  this  coun- 
try. We  have  lately  published  a  biographical  work  on  a  purely 
positivist  basis,  a  book  of  which  I  have  myself  taken  a  share 


MR.    HUXLEY'S   CONTROVERSIES  297 

and  am  general  editor.  I  am  not  about  to  say  anything  in  its 
behalf;  but  I  call  attention  to  this,  that  of  the  contributors 
to  that  volume,  at  least  a  quarter  were  men  of  special  scientific 
training,  men  teaching  or  practising  science  as  their  profession. 
The  collection  of  biographies  includes  the  lives  of  five  hun- 
dred and  fifty-eight  persons ;  and  of  these  about  one  hundred 
are  men  of  special  science.  As  I  had  no  hand  in  these,  I  may 
be  permitted  to  say  that  very  many  of  these  studies  have  been 
thought  to  be  amongst  the  best  contributions  to  science  of  our 
time.  The  Merry  Andrews  of  the  anonymous  press  made 
mouths  at  us  as  usual ;  but  I  am  not  aware  that  any  one  has 
discovered  either  bad  science  or  eviscerated  Papistry  in  our 
aggregate  labours.  The  notion  that  Positivists  in  England 
or  in  France  are  "enemies  of  science,"  or  anything  but  teach- 
ers of  science,  is  a  wild  figment. 

I  daresay  that  Mr.  Huxley,  who  so  often  teaches  bishops 
theology,  would  hke  to  teach  me  Positivism.  He  will  be 
ready  to  tell  me  that  if  I  do  not  profess  ecclesiastical  ob- 
scurantism and  practise  grotesque  rites,  I  ought  to  do  so,  and 
am  no  orthodox  Positivist  if  I  do  not.  That  is  my  affair.  If, 
as  he  seems  to  think,  there  is  a  Positivist  Vatican,  syllabus, 
inquisition,  and  index,  I  will  take  the  risk ;  it  is  not  for  him  to 
denounce  me.  My  profound  conviction  of  the  central  ideas 
of  the  religion  of  humanity,  and  my  reverential  gratitude  to 
the  philosopher  who  first  gave  it  a  systematic  basis,  are  beyond 
suspicion  and  deeper  than  words  can  express.  But  when  I 
show  the  world  how  thin  and  transitional  a  thing  is  Agnosticism 
as  a  religious  philosophy,  I  am  not  answered  by  repeating 
stale  jeers  about  Comtc's  ritualism  or  Comte's  mistakes. 
I  have  listened  patiently  to  these  now  for  years;  for  I  am  a 
man  of  peace,  a  poor  hand  at  controversy,  and  a  great  admirer 
of  my  critic.  But  the  worm  will  turn  at  last.  And  now  that 
Mr.  Huxley  republishes  all  his  absurd  charges  against  me  by 


298  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

name,  it  is  due  to  myself  and  my  colleagues  to  show  what 
we  do  hold  and  what  we  practise.  Our  doings  and  sayings 
at  Newton  Hall  are  open  to  all  men,  and  may  be  read  in  many 
pamphlets  and  books.  I  hear  there  are  in  South  America 
some  people  who  take  all  they  find  in  Comte  literally,  and 
they  may  have  a  few  confederates  elsewhere.  But  I  know 
nothing  of  them,  and  they  have  nothing  to  do  with  me  or  with 
us.  All  that  I  am  concerned  with  is  this,  that  at  Newton  Hall 
there  will  not  be  found  anything  but  sound  science,  a  free 
appeal  to  reason,  and  rational  and  ethical  religion. 

But  let  me  part  from  Mr.  Huxley  with  friendly  feelings. 
We  are  on  the  same  side,  and  I  know  that  he  wishes  me  well. 
We  are  all  proud  of  him,  and  that  pride  has  received  very 
notable  expression  from  the  Government  and  Sovereign  of 
this  country.  For  my  part,  I  have  been  for  thirty  years,  ever 
since  I  used  to  attend  with  the  keenest  delight  his  lectures 
on  physiology,  one  of  his  warmest  admirers.  No  one  living 
has  a  finer  command  than  he  has  of  nervous  English,  a  more 
inborn  instinct  to  make  alive  everything  he  touches,  or  a  more 
honest  contempt  for  humbug.  Of  old  we  were  colleagues  in 
the  Metaphysical  Society,  where  to  hear  Mr.  Huxley  bait  a 
theologian,  or  prick  a  metaphysical  bubble,  was  more  exciting 
than  a  bull- fight.  With  the  reasoning  of  nine-tenths  of  this 
book  I  am,  as  I  say,  in  complete  accord ;  and  there  are  jnany 
things  in  it  which  want  of  space  alone  prevents  me  from  sin- 
gling out  for  praise.  It  is  most  satisfactory  to  find  a  champion 
of  Agnosticism  repudiating  the  nonsense  about  "the  Unknow- 
able" whether  with  a  big  or  little  U  (p.  451).  His  distinction 
between  the  "unknown"  and  the  "unknowable"  is  thor- 
oughly positive  in  every  sense  of  that  term.  And  all  that  he 
says  of  the  contrast  between  Agnosticism  and  Clericalism  is 
most  judicious  and  conclusive.  It  is  pleasant,  too,  to  find  him 
adopting  the  English  word  Renascence,  which  for  years  I  have 


MR.   HUXLEY'S   CONTROVERSIES  299 

been  striving  to  acclimatise  in  place  of  the  misleading  Galli- 
cism Renaissance.  But  most  important  of  all  is  the  positive 
declaration  of  faith  that  "the  service  of  humanity"  is  the 
natural  and  permanent  type  of  true  religion.  I  can  forgive 
him  all  the  hard  words  he  showers  upon  me,  if  I  have  been  the 
humble  instrument  of  leading  this  great  Agnostic  to  avow  his 
own  gnostic  faith  at  last. 

It  is  most  cheering  to  find  that  Mr.  Huxley  looks  for  a  solu- 
tion of  the  religious  problem  in  this  human,  social,  and 
terrestrial  direction,  and  not  in  any  Absolute  philosophy  of 
the  Universe,  or  in  any  Agnostic  creed  whatever.  He  is  quite 
right  in  rejecting  Agnosticism  as  a  creed,  or  the  basis  of  a 
creed.  It  is  interesting  to  find  him  disclaiming  any  scheme 
for  a  "Philosophy  of  Evolution."  Mr,  Herbert  Spencer 
has  attempted  it  with  extraordinary  powers  and  attainments* 
and  has  signally  failed.  And  where  Mr.  Spencer  has  failed 
Mr.  Huxley  is  not  likely  to  succeed.  Science,  or  rather 
physiology  and  its  cognate  subjects,  is  Mr.  Huxley's  true  field, 
and  not  philosophy,  much  less  the  philosophy  of  religion.  He 
is  too  prone  to  promote  religion  by  ridiculing  theology.  He 
is  too  ready  to  think  that  those  who  differ  from  him,  whether 
theologians  or  Positivists,  are  enemies  of  science.  But  the 
latter,  at  any  rate,  can  congratulate  him  on  his  new  volume 
of  essays  as  a  brilliant  contribution  to  the  logic  of  scientific 
inquiry,  and  as  an  indication  that  he  is  really  something  more 
than  an  Agnostic. 


XVIII 
MR.  HUXLEY'S  IRONICON 

I  AM  quite  content  to  leave  my  debate  with  Mr,  Huxley 
about  Agnosticism  just  as  it  stands.  His  explanations  have 
made  his  position,  to  me  at  least,  much  clearer  than  before ; 
and  I  am  pleased  to  have  drawn  from  him  these  interesting 
elucidations.  Agreeing  with  him  as  I  do  in  the  main  on 
the  ultimate  background  of  philosophical  thought,  I  have 
nothing  to  add  on  that  topic.  Sat  prata  hiherunt.  He  and  I 
find  common  ground  on  our  tabula  rasa  as  to  the  whole  field 
beyond  human  knowledge.  Only,  I  find  in  the  field  within 
it  certain  great  truths  which  Mr.  Huxley  does  not  see,  or  sees 
dimly.  Be  it  so :  let  him  which  is  agnostic  be  agnostic  still. 
I  too  am  agnostic  as  to  all  that  is  outside  the  field  of  science. 
As  to  that  which  is  within  it  I  find  a  power  nobler  and  more 
dominant  than  Nature  —  and  that  is  Humanity. 

But  I  have  something  to  say  about  the  wonderful  discover- 
ies concerning  myself  and  my  opinions  which  Mr.  Huxley 
announces  to  the  public.  I  will  try  to  treat  them  as  seriously 
as  I  can ;  but,  as  a  sober  person  myself,  I  find  it  hard  to  rise 
to  the  boisterous  humour  of  his  Ironicon,  which  doubtless 
only  by  a  slip  of  the  pen  he  spells  Irenicon. 

He  has  now  found  out  that  I  have  abjured  the  fundamental 
dogmas  of  Positivism,  that  I  contemptuously  set  aside  Au- 
guste  Comte,  and  have  forsworn  any  worship  or  religion  of 
Humanity.  Perhaps  he  will  tell  the  world  next  that  Mr. 
Gladstone  has  abandoned  Home  Rule,  that  Lord  Salisbury  is 

300 


MR.    HUXLEY'S   IRONICON  3OI 

about  to  abolish  the  House  of  Lords,  and  that  Sir  Wilfrid 
Lawson  has  joined  the  Licensed  Victuallers. 

The  evidence  for  this  piece  of  news  is  "the  good  old  rule, 
the  simple  plan"  of  quoting  half  a  sentence,  suppressing  the 
other  half,  ignoring  the  context,  and  twisting  the  selected  words 
into  a  new  meaning.  I  know  there  is  high  recent  authority 
for  the  practice  which  a  great  personage  thinks  it  useful  to 
adopt ;  and  it  is  one  of  the  most  venerable  weapons  of  theo- 
logical war.  I  remember  at  Oxford  an  eminent  divine  who 
was  fond  (it  was  said)  of  proving,  to  the  confusion  of  all  Pa- 
pists, that  St.  Peter  was  not  above  the  other  apostles,  for 
Christ  said,  "Lo!     I  am  with  you  all  "-[ways,  sotto  voce]. 

Now  by  such  a  use  of  the  argumentum  a  suppressione  Mr. 
Huxley  has  proved  to  his  own  satisfaction  that  I  contemptu- 
ously abjure  Auguste  Comtc.  He  tells  the  world  that  I  have 
written  —  "We  do  not  believe  in  Auguste  Comte."  My  an- 
swer is  that  I  did  not  so  write.  I  wrote  a  sentence  out  of 
which  those  words  are  picked;  a  sentence  which  bears  a 
totally  different  meaning.  Three  years  ago  I  was  addressing 
the  Positivist  body  in  Manchester,  and  by  way  of  warning 
them  against  any  tendency  to  look  for  a  verbal  inspiration 
in  Comte's  writings,  but  to  remember  that  a  religion  of  dem- 
onstration must  rest  on  scientific  proof  and  not  on  authority, 
I  said  what  I  have  often  said  before  and  since. 

Positivism  is  not  independent  of  the  growth  of  sound  science.  It 
depends  upon  it.  Auguste  Comte  is  not  above  philosophy  and  science- 
And  when  philosophy  and  science  have  superseded  his  theories  with 
the  sure  evidence  of  other  doctrines  we  will  be  the  first  to  adopt  them. 
We  do  not  believe  in  Auguste  Comte:  we  believe  in  the  assurances  of 
philosophy  and  science.  We  do  not  worship  Positivism.  We  worship 
or  (to  use  plain  English)  we  submit  ourselves  reverently  to  Humanity. 

The  meaning  of  this  is  perfectly  plain.     Remember,  I  said, 


302  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

thai  the  ultimate  basis  of  Positivism  is  the  growth  of  sound 
science.  Do  not  put  the  words  of  any  book,  no,  not  Comte's, 
above  philosophy  and  science.  Attach  no  superstitious  rev- 
erence to  what  you  may  take  to  be  Positivism,  The  object 
of  our  worship  —  and  by  worship  we  mean  reverent  sub- 
mission —  is  Humanity,  as  revealed  by  Science. 

From  this  plain  and,  I  think,  very  reasonable  passage  of 
mine  Mr.  Huxley  detaches  the  words,  "We  do  not  believe  in 
Auguste  Comte";  putting  a  full  stop  where  there  was  none, 
and  suppressing  the  context,  in  order  to  prove  that  I  have 
"contemputously,"  "contumeliously,"  set  aside  Comte. 
And  he  finds  in  it  evidence  that  I  have  abjured  the  funda- 
mental dogmas  of  Positivism,  and  forswear  the  worship  and 
the  religion  of  Humanity.  So  pleased  is  he  with  the  device 
that  in  four  pages  he  cites  these  detached  words  five  times, 
and  he  makes  them  the  pivot  of  his  remarks.  I  shall  use  no 
epithets  to  describe  what  to  my  mind  savours  of  a  child's  game. 
It  would  be  easy  to  prove  anything  by  the  same  process.  In 
p.  570  Mr.  Huxley  tells  us  that  he  is  a  very  strong  believer  in 
hell,  and  intimates  that  he  has  himself  "descended  into  hell." 
In  his  "Prologue,"  p.  52,  he  speaks  of  the  Bible  as  the  Magna 
Charta.  It  is  quite  true  that  the  context  shows  that,  in  using 
these  words,  he  means  something  very  different ;  but  what  if 
some  lively  writer  were  to  fill  the  pages  of  a  Review  with : 
"Mr.  Huxley  a  Calvinist";  "the  great  Agnostic  has  been  in 
hell  and  sees  at  last  it  is  all  true  " ;  "  Mr.  Huxley,  the  Atheist, 
is  now  converted  to  Holy  Writ"  —  and  so  forth?  It  is  very 
easy,  and  infinitely  silly,  to  say  nothing  more.  Mr.  Huxley 
protests  that  he  is  no  teacher  or  moralist.  I  think  in  his 
meditative  retirement  he  should  beware  of  rushing  to  the 
other  extreme. 

Suppose  a  facetious  person,  knowing  Mr.  Huxley's  admira- 
tion for  the  philosophers  Descartes  and  Hume,  were  to  twit 


MR.   HUXLEY'S   IRONICON  303 

him  with  being  a  believer  in  "vortices,"  or  in  Hume's  estimate 
of  Charles  I.,  Mr.  Huxley  might  reply,  "I  am  no  Cartesian  in 
the  sense  of  believing  in  Descartes  against  the  verdict  of 
science ;  nor  do  I  put  Hume  above  the  conclusions  of  sound 
historical  knowledge."  Whereupon  the  facetious  person 
rejoins,  "Mr.  Huxley  abjures  Descartes,  snaps  his  fingers  at 
Hume,  says  he  does  not  believe  in  either,  has  patented  a  new 
philosophy  all  his  own  !  Poor  old  Descartes,  good  old  David, 
it  must  make  you  turn  in  your  graves  to  be  so  befooled,"  etc., 
etc.  It  is  quite  easy  but  it  is  a  form  of  jesting  for  which  I 
have  no  turn. 

Mr.  Huxley  informs  the  public,  mainly  on  the  strength 
of  the  garbled  sentence  —  i.  That  I  reject  the  fundamental 
doctrines  of  Positivism;  2.  That  I  contemptuously  disbelieve 
in  Comte;  3.  That  I  abjure  systematic  worship;  4.  That  I 
seek  to  get  rid  of  a  religion  of  Humanity.  There  is  not  a 
word  of  truth  in  any  one  of  these  propositions.  But,  even  if 
they  were  true,  what  business  is  it  of  Mr.  Huxley,  and  how 
does  it  prove  Agnosticism  to  be  the  only  sensible  creed  ?  It 
is  worth  while  noticing  how  the  debate  has  come  round  to  this 
point.  Some  years  ago  I  wrote  an  article  to  show  that,  how- 
ever true  as  a  philosophic  thesis.  Agnosticism  was  not  an 
adequate  or  permanent  solution  of  the  religious  problem. 
Mr.  Huxley,  whom  I  had  not  criticised,  replied,  not  indeed  to 
my  argument,  but  by  comparing  me  to  the  Pope,  Joe  Smith, 
and  other  personages.  That  did  not  advance  the  case  of  Ag- 
nosticism; but  I  said  no  more.  Three  years  afterwards  he 
republishes  the  comparison  of  myself  to  the  Pope  and  Joe 
Smith,  in  spite  of  my  friendly  remonstrances.  I  then  took 
occasion  to  show,  from  a  series  of  published  addresses  of 
mine,  that  nothing  could  be  less  like  the  Pope  or  Joe  Smith 
than  what  I  had  been  saying  for  years.  And  now  he  replies 
that  I  am  a  turncoat,  unorthodox,  an  ungrateful,  rebellious, 


304 


PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON  SENSE 


and  doubting  disciple,  and  so  forth.  How  does  all  this  ad- 
vance the  case  of  Agnosticism  as  the  final  creed  of  science? 
It  docs  not  seem  a  very  consistent  thing  to  repudiate  a  system 
of  belief  for  oneself,  and  yet  to  set  up  as  judge  of  orthodoxy 
within  it  for  others.  Mr.  Huxley  would  perhaps  Hke  Catho- 
lics and  Protestants  to  come  to  him  if  they  want  to  understand 
their  own  creeds,  and  not  to  listen  to  what  they  say  at  Rome 
or  at  Lambeth. 

The  article  in  which  Mr.  Huxley  finds  my  contemptuous 
rejection  of  the  fundamental  dogmas  of  Positivism  and  of 
Auguste  Comte  contained  this  sentence:  —  "My  profound 
conviction  of  the  central  ideas  of  the  religion  of  humanity,  and 
my  reverential  gratitude  to  the  philosopher  who  first  gave  it  a 
systematic  basis,  are  beyond  suspicion  and  deeper  than  words 
can  express."  With  these  words  before  him,  Mr.  Huxley 
thinks  it  worth  his  while  to  twist  a  phrase  out  of  its  context 
a  few  pages  earlier,  and  gravely  to  tell  the  world  of  my  "dis- 
belief in  the  prophet,"  with  sundry  comicalities  about  Moses 
and  Joshua,  Mecca  and  Mahomet.  There  was  a  much 
simpler  process  ready  to  his  hand.  He  should  have  taken 
the  passage  cited  above,  and  quoted  it  after  altering  the  word 
"conviction^'  into  "disbelief,"  and  "reverential  gratitude'' 
into  "scorn."  In  religious  controversy  you  should  never 
stick  at  trifles. 

The  address  in  which  Mr.  Huxley  discovers  that  1  have 
abjured  the  religion  of  Humanity  closes  with  the  following 
passages : — 

People  who  hear  of  a  religion  of  Humanity  for  the  first  time  are  apt 
to  compare  it  with  the  religion,  so-called,  of  Christ,  and  of  an  omnipo- 
tent and  omniscient  Creator;  and  they  very  naturally  find  it  difficult 
to  accept  the  divinity  of  the  human  race,  its  infinite  wisdom,  goodness, 
and  power,  and  all  the  other  relative  attributes  of  a  Creator.  No  such 
comparison  is  possible  or  reasonable.     Those  who  are  fully  convinced 


MR.    HUXLEY'S  IRONICON  305 

of  the  reality  and  certainty  of  the  Creator,  and  of  the  authority  of  the 
ways  in  which  his  will  has  been  revealed  to  man,  will  not  be  disturbed 
in  their  belief  by  any  word  of  ours.  But  that  large  and  growing  order 
of  thinking  men  and  women,  who  have  no  such  conviction,  may  fairly 
be  asked  to  reflect  if  religion  has  not  been  pitched  in  far  too  extravagant 
and  mystical  a  key,  if  to  ask  for  omnipotence,  omniscience,  all-goodness, 
and  all-majesty  be  not  an  extravagant  demand;  and  if  a  manly,  sober, 
rational,  and  practical  religion  may  not  be  found  in  ideals  less  exalted, 
perhaps,  but  then  far  more  distinct  and  close  to  us,  in  the  trained  sense 
of  duty  that  we  owe  to  the  vast  organic  being  of  humanity,  past,  present, 
and  to  come,  to  render  to  it  some  infinitesimal  part  of  the  service  which 
it  has  rendered  to  us,  to  look  up  to  it  with  respect  as  our  true  mother 
on  the  earth,  and  to  look  forward  to  its  indefinite  progress  in  the  future 
to  a  nobler  state  as  the  best  equivalent  of  dreams  of  personal  immor- 
tality. Duty  to  family  has  long  been  acknowledged  as  the  most  pre- 
cious inheritance  of  civilised  mankind;  duty  to  country  has  long  been 
felt  to  be  the  foundation  of  men's  life  as  social  beings.  There  is  one 
step  more  in  the  series  which  has  long  been  taken  unconsciously,  but 
which  it  now  awaits  us  to  take  consciously  —  the  sense  of  duty  to  Hu- 
manity —  a  duty  which,  if  less  vivid  in  its  power  over  us  than  duty  to 
family,  if  less  visibly  present  to  us  than  duty  to  country,  is  infinitely 
grander,  more  permanent,  more  social  than  the  idea  of  family  or  coun- 
try, and  is  incapable  of  being  turned,  as  both  of  these  are,  into  a  narrow 
selfishness;  and  which,  when  duly  cultivated  by  training  from  child- 
hood, and  duly  set  forth  with  all  the  glow  of  imagination  and  enthusiasm, 
is  amply  sufficient  to  make  men  steadfast  and  true  in  Hfe,  calm  and  re- 
signed in  death,  just,  honest,  sober,  and  humane  towards  all  men  and 
at  all  times. 

I  have  now  been  engaged  (not  indeed  by  my  own  spon- 
taneous act,  but  by  the  pressing  call  of  others)  for  some 
twenty  years  in  endeavouring  to  explain  these  ideas,  and 
for  many  years  I  have  been  constantly  addressing  our  body  at 
Newton  Hall.  In  all  that  time  not  one  word  has  ever  fallen 
from  me  other  than  what  I  truly  described,  in  my  article  of 
last  October,  as  "profound  conviction  of  the  central  ideas  of 
the  religion  of  Humanity,  and  reverential  gratitude"  towards 


3o6  PHILOSOPHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

Auguste  Comte.  I  have  before  me,  in  a  collected  volume, 
scores  of  such  utterances  extending  over  the  last  fourteen 
years.  I  shall  not  weary  the  reader  with  setting  them  forth; 
nor  can  I  notice  attempts  to  prove  the  contrary  by  the  school- 
boy's diversion  of  perverting  a  sentence  by  erasing  words. 

I  am  no  stickler  for  consistency,  and  have  but  a  moderate 
opinion  of  its  virtue,  in  things  practical  and  temporal.  In 
philosophy  and  religion,  anything  but  gradual  evolution  is 
perhaps  a  sign  of  weakness.  Looking  back  over  the  course . 
of  our  movement  at  Newton  Hall  and  its  very  cautious  de- 
velopment, I  can  find  no  trace  of  any  variation  in  principle. 
Complete  unity  of  idea  has  marked  it  throughout,  and  has 
certainly  pervaded  my  own  public  utterances.  As  a  sum- 
mary of  my  own  belief  I  have  used  indeed  the  same  words 
from  first  to  last  without  change.  In  the  lines  which  we  first 
laid  down  we  have  steadfastly  continued ;  and,  ever  since  I 
first  addressed  the  public  on  these  questions,  I  have,  for  my 
own  part,  uniformly  held  the  same  language  and  maintained 
the  same  position.  The  discovery,  therefore,  of  any  change 
of  front,  either  in  our  movement  or  in  my  own  teaching,  is 
only  the  discovery  of  another  mare's  nest. 

"I  took  it  for  granted,"  says  Mr.  Huxley,  to  me,  "that  you 
practised  everything  to  be  read  in  Comte  on  his  absolute  au- 
thority —  priesthood  on  the  Papistical  model,  spiritual  despo- 
tism and  all."  Now  a  rigid  Agnostic  should  not  take  matters 
of  fact  for  granted  without  verification.  Why  take  this  for 
granted?  I  reply  by  quoting  a  series  of  addresses  which 
show  that,  whilst  looking  to  the  teaching  of  Comte  with 
reverence  and  gratitude,  we  have  never  attributed  to  him  ver- 
bal inspiration,  and  have  no  priesthood  or  spiritual  despotism 
at  all.  Well,  then,  says  he,  "You  ought  to  have,  you  are  un- 
grateful rebels,  apostates,  and  shams ;  and  if  you  do  not  know 
what  the  essence  of  Positivism  is,  I  will  take  leave  to  show  you." 


MR.    HUXLEY'S  IRONICON 


307 


Mr.  Huxley  has  written  a  great  deal  about  Descartes,  for 
whom  he  professes  a  boundless  respect.  At  the  root  of  Des- 
cartes' system  stands  his  proof  of  the  existence  of  God. 
Suppose  I  "took  it  for  granted"  that  Mr.  Huxley  adopted 
all  this;  he  denies  it;  thereupon  I  reply,  "Here  is  a  rebel, 
sham  believer  in  Descartes  !  What  ingratitude,  what  fraud  ! 
The  existence  of  God  is  the  beginning  and  end  of  his  doctrine, 
and  the  Neo-Cartesians  reject  it !  I  don't  myself  believe  in 
all  this  metaphysics,  but  you  are  bound  to  do  so."  Such  is  the 
language  he  holds  to  me. 

The  ground  which,  from  the  first,  I  took  up  and  have  un- 
ceasingly maintained  is  quite  consistent  and  perfectly  plain. 
In  the  address  of  1889,  already  quoted,  I  put  it  thus:  — 

The  idea  of  Positivism,  of  a  co-ordination  of  Philosophy  and  Science, 
of  a  religion  based  on  Demonstration,  of  Humanity  as  a  living  force 
and  as  an  object  of  reverence,  is  as  completely  English  and  American 
as  it  is  French,  and  belongs  to  the  last  four  or  five  generations  of  en- 
lightened men,  and  certainly  to  our  own.  We  as  a  body  have  now 
been  organised  these  many  years,  and  have  met  week  by  week  and 
year  by  year  to  make  clear  the  faith  that  is  in  us.  But  we  have  as  yet 
made  no  attempt  whatever  to  put  into  practice  all  the  suggestions  and 
prescriptions  that  can  be  picked  out  of  the  writings  of  Auguste  Comte. 

That  has  been  my  position  from  the  first.  If  it  shocks 
Mr.  Huxley,  I  can  only  smile  at  his  setting  up  for  a  grand 
inquisitor.  He  may  call  me  all  the  names  he  can  discover 
in  the  long  history  of  heresy  and  schism  —  Supralapsarian  or 
Homoeousian  —  he  may  denounce  me,  if  it  give  him  satisfac- 
tion, for  confusing  the  persons  or  dividing  the  substance; 
but  if  he  says  that  I  have  ever  uttered  one  word  of  disrespect 
for  Comte  or  for  the  genuine  worship  of  Humanity,  he  will 
be  saying  that  which  manifestly  is  not.' 

'  The  other  day,  at  a  public  place,  an  aggressive  person  accused  a  mild  • 
gentleman  of  carrj'ing  off  his  umbrella.     The  mild  gentleman  politely  held 
up  his,  and  showed  his  own  name  and  address  engraved  on  the  handle. 


308  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

And  then  Mr.  Huxley  sets  up  to  teach  me  what  I  mean, 
or  what  I  ought  to  mean,  by  the  worship  of  Humanity.  The 
simplest  course  would  be  to  "take  it  for  granted"  that  I 
mean  what  I  say.  I  have  stated  it  fully  and  precisely,  but 
that  does  not  satisfy  him.  My  words  were:  —  "I  mean  no 
more  than  reverence  and  love  for  all  that  is  good  and  great 
in  the  social  organism."  On  the  next  page  I  said  —  By 
"religion"  I  mean  the  service  of  humanity;  by  "humanity," 
the  permanent  and  collective  power  of  the  human  organism ; 
by  "worship,"  the  sense  of  gratitude,  love,  and  reverence 
which  men  feel  for  their  country,  their  family,  their  bene- 
factors —  somewhat  higher  in  degree,  but  not  differing  in 
kind.  I  mean  that  and  nothing  more.  I  have  always  meant 
that.  I  intend  to  mean  that.  And,  if  any  one  tells  me  that 
I  do  not  mean  that,  I  can  only  politely  request  him  to  mind 
his  own  business.  But  Mr.  Huxley  is  not  content  with  that : 
he  wants  to  teach  me  what  I  do  mean,  and  is  quite  scan- 
dalised at  my  obstinate  heresy.  Can  anything  be  more 
comic  than  Mr.  Huxley  raising  an  outcry  that  these  wicked, 
ungrateful  Positivists  will  not  believe  the  plain  words  of 
Comte  —  or  rather,  what  he,  Mr.  Huxley,  the  Agnostic,  takes 
for  granted  to  be  the  plain  words  of  Comte  ? 

All  that  he  says  about  culte  is  another  mare's  nest.  His 
words  are  —  "When  the  founder  of  Positivism  uses  the 
word  'culte,'  he,  indubitably,  uses  it  in  the  strict  theological 
sense."  To  this  I  reply,  in  the  classical  language  of  Mr. 
Burchell,  in  the  Vicar  of  Wakefield,  "Fudge."  Mr.  Huxley 
goes  on  —  "he  sets  'Humanity'  as  the  'new  Supreme  Being' 
in  the  place  of  the  Divinity  of  the  theologians."  Again, 
with  Mr.   Burchell,  I  say  —  "Fudge."     Arrant,  laughable 

But  the  aggressive  one  did  not  apologise.  "  I  took  it  for  granted,"  said  he, 
"  that  you  had  got  mine,  because  I  assumed  you  were  not  likely  to  have  got 
so  good  a  one  of  your  own !  " 


MR.    HUXLEY'S  IRONICON  309 

nonsense,  as  any  one  who  has  read  Comte  with  due  care, 
well  knows.  Culte  is,  of  course,  good  French  for  worship 
in  the  strict  theological  sense,  the  adoration  of  a  superhuman 
transcendent  Divinity.  It  also  means,  as  Littre  states  in  his 
dictionary,  "veneration  profonde,"  i.e.  sincere  reverence, 
and  Littre  quotes  the  phrase,  "J'eus  pour  Scipion  ce  culte 
qu'il  est  doux  d'accordcr  au  genie."  *  Now  this  is  the  sense 
in  which  culte  is  habitually  used  by  Comte.  When  he  recom- 
mends "le  cuUe  des  morts,"  "le  culte  de  la  femme,"  "le 
culte  d'amour,"  does  he  mean  the  adoration  (in  the  strict 
theological  sense)  of  the  dead  as  divinities,  or  of  women,  or 
does  he  mean  the  "adoration"  of  love?  Nonsense,  fudge! 
he  means  the  cherishing  a  feeling  of  "sincere  reverence"  for 
the  worthy  dead,  for  good  women,  cherishing  the  spirit  of 
love  (rather  than  of  hate  and  contempt). 

It  so  happens  that  Comte's  own  daily  prayers  are  pub- 
lished, as  he  recited  them  during  eleven  years  down  to  his 
death.  They  fill  twenty  octavo  pages,  and,  from  first  to 
last,  there  is  not  a  single  phrase  of  adoration  of  Humanity, 
"in  the  strict  theological  sense."  They  consist  entirely  of 
moral  sentiments,  passages  from  Dante,  Petrarch,  and  other 
poets,  mental  reflections  on  the  goodness  of  a  dead  woman 
who  was  his  Beatrice  or  Laura,  and  passages  from  their 
correspondence  during  life.  The  first  line  is,  "Ce  culte 
d'amour  et  de  reconnaissance  ne  peut  jamais  cesser  de  me 
soulagcr  et  surtout  de  m'amdliorer."  Does  this  mean  —  this 
adoration  of  love,  etc.,  etc.?  Of  course  not.  The  English 
of  it  is  —  "This  cherishing  of  love  and  gratitude  (for  a  dead 
friend)  can  never  fail  to  comfort,  and  above  all  to  elevate 

'  As  I  write,  I  read  in  a  recent  political  essay  by  a  Belgian  author,  Dr. 
Sarolea,  the  following  description  of  Condorcet,  "  Croyant  quand  mSme 
malgre  la  Terreur,  au  culte  de  Vhumanile."  Certainly  Condorcet  never 
dreamed  in  1794  of  "  worshipping  humanity."  All  that  it  means  is,  that  he 
had  a  profound  faith  in  human  nature. 


310  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

me.-'  Further  on  Comte  speaks  of  "le  culte  intime  d'une 
tendre  mere  et  d'une  digne  fille  ou  soeur."  Can  this  mean 
the  divinising  and  adoring,  "in  the  strict  theological  sense," 
of  mother,  daughter,  or  sister?  Of  course  not.  It  means, 
cherishing  the  feeling  of  love  for  mother,  daughter,  sister. 

Culte  is  a  word  which,  as  used  by  Comte,  cannot  well  be 
rendered  by  any  single  English  word  or  phrase.  It  implies 
all  that  can  stimulate,  cultivate,  and  enlarge  our  feeling  of 
respect,  gratitude,  and  love  for  some  worthy  object.  Every 
act,  whether  of  study,  of  expression,  of  art,  or  of  meditation, 
which  cultivates  these  feelings  is  included.  "Worship"  is  a 
very  inadequate  word,  for  it  has  come,  in  modern  days,  to 
be  restricted  to  the  expressions  of  adoration  for  superhuman 
objects.  Culte  de  PHumanite  properly  includes  such  differ- 
ent things  as  the  commemoration  of  great  men;  a  Mozart 
or  Handel  festival;  a  visit  to  Shakespeare's  birthplace  and 
grave ;  a  course  of  lectures  on  history ;  the  reading  of  Dante, 
Milton,  or  Moliere.  When  our  body  in  Paris,  annually,  on 
September  5th,  visits  the  tomb  of  Comte  in  Pere-la-Chaise ; 
when,  in  London,  we  visit  the  Abbey,  where  lie  those  whom 
Mr.  Huxley,  in  his  poetic  hours,  and  in  purely  Positivist 
phraseology,  so  happily  invokes  as  "head  servants  of  the 
human  kind";  when  we  sing  in  chorus  the  Marseillaise  or 
Tennyson's  "Ring  out,  wild  bells,"  we  do  what  Comte 
means  by  the  culte  de  VHumanite.  To  restrict  the  term  to 
the  invocation  of  an  ideal  being  is  contrary  to  the  language 
as  to  the  practice  of  Comte ;  and  it  is  contrary  to  ours.  Mr. 
Huxley  quotes  Candide's  "Culthmis  notre  jardin."  Does 
that  mean,  adore  our  garden  ?  When  next  he  undertakes  to 
teach  me  French  he  should  look  into  his  Littre. 

Comte  chose  to  make  use  of  a  number  of  terms  as  old 
and  as  widespread  as  the  human  kind,  which  in  modern 
Europe  have  drifted  into  a  narrow,  technical  use.     It  was  a 


MR.    HUXLEY'S   IRONICON  311 

very  perilous  experiment,  which  perhaps  has  weighted  his 
teaching  more  than  anything  else.     And  the  risk  is  doubled 
when  the  French  is  crudely  done  into  English  terms  of  the 
same  sound  with  dififerent   connotations.     "Religion"  has 
got  to  mean   "adoring  the   Divinity."     "Supreme   Being" 
now  means  God.     "Worship"  comes  to  mean  invoking  God. 
"Service"  has  come  to  mean  recital  of  prayers  or  litany. 
But  these  ancient  terms  do  not  properly  mean  this.     There 
is  a  very  old  and  real  religion  of  Confucius ;  in  the  marriage 
service  the  husband  "worships"  the  wife;  and  the  Republic 
was  the  supreme  being  of  Danton.     When  the  French  terms 
are  crudely  put  into  schoolboy  English,  the  confusion  is  still 
greater.     A  young  Frenchman   "adores"   his  mother,  and 
even  black  coffee.     He  does  not  address  his  tutor  as  "dear 
sir,"  but  as  "venerable  maitre";   every  one  who  speaks  for 
three  minutes  on  his  legs  is  an   "orator";    and  a  pretty 
woman  is  ange,  deesse,  divinite,  and   so  forth.     They  who 
have  had  to  translate  French  know  how  seldom  the  French 
word  can  be  rendered  by  its  English  synonym.     Here  is  a 
pitfall  for  the  tiro  and  a  godsend  to  the  funny  man.     Comte 
boldly  used  these  ancient  terms  in  their  sterling,  general 
sense  to  mean  things  utterly  different   from  the  acquired 
theological  sense.     The  tiro  and  the  funny  man  persist  in 
using  them  in  the  narrow  theological  sense. 

It  is  a  troublesome  task  to  bring  back  indispensable  terms 
to  their  true,  rational,  and  scientific  meaning  and  to  wrest 
them  from  the  grasp  of  priests ;  but  it  has  to  be  done.  We 
who  are  no  longer  the  slaves  of  theological  associations,  now 
use  "religion"  for  our  devotion  to  our  sense  of  human  duty, 
"worship"  for  the  cultivation  of  intelligent  reverence,  "ser- 
vice" for  acts  of  usefulness  and  goodness  towards  our  fellow- 
men,  and  "Supreme  Being"  for  the  collective  power  of  the 
human  organism.     Mr.  Huxley,  who  seems  still  in  the  bond- 


312  PHILOSOPHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

age  of  theological  associations,  is  scandalised  at  this  profane 
use  of  sacred  language,  and  invokes  heaven  and  earth  to 
witness  how  shamefully  poor  Comte  is  being  betrayed.  Let 
him  use  his  Littre  to  better  purpose,  read  Comte  with  the 
honest  end  of  trying  to  understand  him,  and  not  to  find  in 
him  a  peg  for  a  few  epigrams,  and  cease  to  accuse  Positivists 
of  heresy,  schism,  and  profanity,  because  they  study  Comte 
with  open  minds  and  understand  the  French  language. 

Take  an  extreme  case.  To  the  ordinary  theological  mind, 
"Supreme  Being"  means  God  Almighty.  To  every  one  who 
holds  Agnostic  opinions  about  creation  and  the  conclusions 
of  sociology  as  to  the  social  organism,  it  is  an  accurate  de- 
scription of  humanity.  It  is  a  term  of  exact  science,  and 
not  of  mystical  adoration.  "What  is  a  "being"?  Obviously 
a  man,  woman,  dog,  family,  city,  country,  and  so  forth, 
every  collective  unit  having  organic  life  and  continuity.  To 
the  sociologist  the  social  organism  is  simply  a  great  organic 
being ;  to  the  Agnostic  it  is  the  greatest  organic  being  scien- 
tifically known  to  us  on  our  planet.  The  social  organism  is 
therefore  with  rigorous  accuracy  described  as  the  highest 
great  organism  known  to  science.  I  do  not  myself  use  a 
term  so  liable  to  be  misunderstood,  but  Comte,  who  had 
the  courage  of  his  opinions,  at  times  uses  the  term  Etre- 
Supreme,  or  Grand  Etre,  for  the  social  organism.  When  he 
talks  of  "serving"  it,  he  means  by  doing  your  duty;  -when 
he  talks  of  "loving"  it,  he  means,  love  your  race  as  you  love 
your  country ;  and  by  chants  to  it,  he  means  what  our  fore- 
fathers meant  when  they  sang,  God  save  the  king !  or  when 
John  of  Gaunt  broke  out  — 

This  happy  breed  of  men,  this  little  world, 
This  precious  stone  set  in  the  silver  sea. 

That  is  what  Comte  meant  and  what  we  mean.    Those 


MR.   HUXLEY'S   IRONICON  313 

that  please  may  laugh.  But  the  laughers  only  show  that 
they  cannot  get  rid  of  their  early  theological  associations, 
and  still  see  some  mystical  nonsense  in  exact  scientific  terms. 
Why,  then,  need  we  use  terms  which  have  acquired  by  asso- 
ciation special  connotations?  Simply  because  we  desire  to 
divert  old  associations  of  reverence  towards  real  and  de- 
monstrable objects  of  gratitude  and  respect. 

This  is  now  being  carried  into  practice  by  a  body  of  men 
and  women  who  find  in  it  happiness  and  strength  - —  a  happi- 
ness and  a  strength  which  make  them  supremely  indifferent 
to  the  opinion  of  idle  people  wandering  about  the  fair  and 
looking  out  for  heads  to  crack.  Those  who  care  to  find  out 
what  it  means  can  easily  satisfy  themselves,  for  the  doors 
are  always  open  and  there  arc  no  mysteries.  It  is  waste  of 
time  for  them  to  cite  a  few  sentences  out  of  books  they  have 
never  studied  and  do  not  understand.  It  would  be  as  hope- 
ful a  task  to  try  to  make  out  what  the  Catholic  Church  is 
in  practice  by  collecting  a  few  texts  from  Suarez,  or  by  con- 
cocting epigrams  about  the  Syllabus.  I  am  sorry  if  we  can- 
not look  for  assistance,  or  even  sympathy,  from  Mr.  Huxley 
—  who  speaks  like  a  man  to  whom  this  world  offers  nothing 
to  hope  and  little  to  love.  But  I  am  glad  to  think  that  the 
pessimism  of  his  declining  years  will  be  soothed  by  that  fine 
prophetic  sentiment  of  his  —  that  the  service  of  humanity  is 
the  "only  religion  which  will  prove  itself  to  be  unassailably 
acceptable  as  long  as  the  human  race  endures." 


XIX 

MR.  A.  BALFOUR'S  FOUNDATIONS  OF  BELIEF 

Mr.  Arthur  Balfour's  book  has  excited  so  much  atten- 
tion and  so  directly  challenges  the  Positivist  Foundations  of 
Belief,  that  some  notice  of  it  should  now  be  taken.  It  is 
due  to  the  high  position  which  Mr.  Balfour  holds  as  a  states- 
man and  the  obvious  importance  of  any  pronouncement  of 
his  on  the  popular  creed.  All  respect  must  be  given  to  his 
great  ability  and  eminent  position :  his  own  graceful  and 
ingenious  spirit  charms  millions  of  his  countrymen ;  and  the 
eloquence,  wit,  and  pathetic  dreaminess  of  his  writing  can- 
not fail  to  be  popular.  But  to  speak  the  plain  truth,  his 
book  offers  us  nothing  new,  nothing  of  philosophical  power. 
It  is  mainly  the  old  cloudy,  sceptical,  sub-cynical  pessimism 
—  trotted  out  again  in  the  interest  of  the  powers  that  be 
and  the  established  creed.  That  such  vague  guessing  and 
doubting  should  be  seriously  treated  as  the  foundations  of 
belief  is  a  curious  proof  of  the  palsy  which  seems  to  be  creep- 
ing over  masculine  thought  and  of  the  current  set  of  opinion, 
under  the  tide  of  conservative  reaction,  towards  metaphysical 
and  theological  conundrums. 

It  is  not  easy  for  a  sincere  admirer  of  Mr.  Balfour's  very 
interesting  genius  to  treat  frankly  a  book  to  which  he  has 

evidently  given  his  whole  heart.     Amicus  Plato  sed .    He 

has  already  treated  of  Positivism  with  the  respect  of  genuine 
alarm  and  the  ignorance  of  utter  misconception ;  and  much 
as  one  would  make  allowances  for  a  graceful  and  candid 

314 


MR.  A.  BALFOUR'S   FOUNDATIONS   OF   BELIEF  315 

critic,  whose  strength  is  given  to  statesmanship  and  not  to 
philosophy,  it  would  be  real  weakness  to  follow  the  adula- 
tion of  the  press,  and  to  pretend  that  there  is  anything  new 
or  serious  in  these  pretty  bubbles  of  hypothetical  doubts  and 
imaginary  dangers  which  Mr.  Balfour  has  often  blown  before, 
and  which  so  many  other  defenders  of  the  faith  have  blown 
before  and  since. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  follow  Mr.  Balfour  throughout  his 
elaborate  argument,  because  the  whole  of  it  is  vitiated  by 
the  radical  misconception  which  underlies  the  entire  book, 
and  which  is  carefully  expounded  in  the  preliminar}^  chap- 
ter. His  book  is  a  convergent  series  of  attacks  on  what  he 
calls  "Naturalism";  but  it  is  plain  from  his  opening  pages 
that  he  misunderstands  the  philosophy  of  "Naturalism,"  that 
he  misconceives  its  data,  its  method,  its  logic,  and  its  aim. 
What  he  calls  "Naturalism"  is  a  method  of  reasoning  that 
is  not  adopted  by  any  school  of  credit  in  this  country  at  any 
rate,  but  which  he  magnifies  into  a  soul-destroying  form  of 
infidelity  such  as  we  so  often  hear  denounced  in  impassioned 
sermons  from  the  pulpit.  The  schools  of  thought  which 
Mr.  Balfour  thinks  he  is  confuting  under  the  common 
description  of  Naturalism  all  deny  that  they  ever  held  any 
such  views  at  all.  Agnostics,  Empiricists,  Evolutionists, 
Positivists,  all  in  turn  declare  that  they  have  neither  kith 
nor  kin  with  Mr.  Balfour's  "Naturalism."  There  may 
be  types  of  French  or  German  materialists  who  hold  some- 
thing of  the  sort.  But  as  to  our  own  Agnostics,  Empiri- 
cists, Evolutionists,  and  Positivists,  Mr.  Balfour,  it  is  plain, 
has  no  real  knowledge  of  their  bases  of  belief  or  of  their 
canons  of  reasoning.  In  his  preliminary  chapter  he  tells 
us  that  his  book  has  reference  to  a  system  which  ultimately 
profits  by  the  defeat  of  Theology,  and  he  thus  describes 
this  system  •  — 


3i6  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

Agnosticism,  Positivism,  Empiricism,  have  all  been  used  more  or  less 
correctly  to  describe  this  scheme  of  thought;  though  in  the  following 
pages,  for  reasons  with  which  it  is  not  necessary  to  trouble  the  reader, 
the  term  which  I  shall  commonly  employ  is  Naturalism.  But  what- 
ever the  name  selected,  the  thing  itself  is  sufficiently  easy  to  describe. 
For  its  leading  doctrines  are  that  we  may  know  "phenomena"  and 
the  laws  by  which  they  are  connected,  but  nothing  more.  "More" 
there  may  or  may  not  be;  but  if  it  exists  we  can  never  apprehend  it; 
and  whatever  the  world  may  be  "in  its  reality"  (supposing  such  an 
expression  to  be  otherwise  than  meaningless)  the  World  for  us,  the 
World  with  which  alone  we  are  concerned,  or  of  which  alone  we  can 
have  any  cognisance,  is  that  World  which  is  revealed  to  us  through 
perception,  and  which  is  the  subject-matter  of  the  Natural  Sciences. 
Here,  and  here  only,  are  we  on  firm  ground.  Here,  and  here  only,  can 
we  discover  anything  which  deserves  to  be  described  as  knowledge. 
Here,  and  here  only,  may  we  profitably  exercise  our  reason  or  gather 
the  fruits  of  Wisdom.     Such  in  rough  outline  is  Naturalism. 

And  in  a  note  Mr.  Balfour  explains  that  by  phenomena  he 
means  "things  and  events,  the  general  subject-matter  of 
Natural  Science" ;  and  by  Metaphysics  he  means  knowledge 
"respecting  realities  which  are  not  phenomenal,  e.g.  God  and 
the  Soul." 

Now  the  passage  just  quoted  is  full  of  confusion  and  mis- 
statement. In  the  first  place,  Positivism  and  Agnosticism 
stand  widely  apart.  Recent  controversy  has  emphasised  the 
fact  that  they  entirely  decline  to  accept  each  other's  starting- 
point.  Positivism  is  the  religion  of  Humanity  resting  on  the 
philosophy  of  human  nature.  Agnosticism,  as  a  specific 
philosophy,  is  necessarily  negative:  declining  to  commit 
itself  to  any  definite  religion.  Nor  is  Positivism  in  any  sense 
the  equivalent  of  Empiricism.  It  has  never  identified  itself 
with  any  absolute  scheme  of  Evolutionism  as  a  systematic 
and  synthetic  philosophy  of  the  Universe.  It  has  stoutly 
repudiated  all  absolute  syntheses  or  attempts  to  explain  the 


MR.  A.  BALFOUR'S   FOUNDATIONS   OF  BELIEF  317 

Universe  or  even  Earth  and  Man  on  any  set  of  homogeneous 
dogmas.  It  has  been  hotly  criticised  because  it  declines  to 
accept  as  a  new  Book  of  Genesis  all  the  so-called  Darwinian 
hypotheses  about  the  origins  of  living  forms.  For  years 
Positivists  have  been  engaged  in  showing  the  insufficiency 
of  much  that  styles  itself  Agnosticism,  Darwinism,  Evolu- 
tion, and  the  like,  as  all  being  alien  to  a  truly  relative  philoso- 
phy and  leading  to  a  moral  paralysis  of  the  religious  emotions. 
As  to  Materialism,  Positivism  has  continually  denounced 
these  sophisms  as  shallow  and  debasing.  And  yet  Mr.  Bal- 
four, who  for  many  years  has  had  controversies  about  Posi- 
tivism on  his  hands,  again  talks  loosely  of  Agnosticism, 
Positivism,  Empiricism,  and  Naturalism,  as  all  amounting 
to  much  the  same  thing.  In  truth,  he  has  no  philosophical 
grasp  of  any  one  of  these  four  very  different  schemes  of 
thought. 

Confining  myself  strictly  to  Positivism,  with  which  alone 
I  am  concerned,  I  begin  by  pointing  out  the  fundamental 
misconception  of  Mr.  Balfour  in  this  passage  above  cited. 
The  leading  doctrines  of  Naturalism,  he  says,  "are  that  we 
may  know  'phenomena'  and  the  laws  by  which  they  are 
connected,  but  nothing  more."  The  only  World  of  which 
we  can  have  cognisance,  according  to  Naturalism,  "is  that 
World  which  is  revealed  to  us  through  perception,  and  which 
is  the  subject-matter  of  the  'Natural  Sciences.'"  And 
"phenomena"  arc  "things  and  events,  the  general  subject- 
matter  of  Natural  Science."  Now,  so  far  as  Positivism  is 
concerned,  that  is  an  entire  perversion  of  the  bases  and  the 
methods  of  its  philosophy.  The  subject-matter  of  Positivism 
embraces  all  things  of  which  any  thinking  being  is  conscious. 
All  facts  of  consciousness,  all  mental  impressions  and  ideas 
of  any  kind  are  just  as  much  its  subject-matter  as  they  are 
that  of  any  theologian  or  metaphysician.     Positivism  does  not 


3i8  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

limit  the  field  of  its  subject-matter ;  it  excludes  nothing  cog- 
nisable or  even  recognisable  by  the  brain ;  it  does  not  shut  out 
any  hypothesis.  Everything  that  can  be  the  subject  of  thought 
or  consciousness  is  just  as  completely  open  to  the  Positivist  to 
meditate  upon  as  it  can  be  to  the  theologian.  The  difference 
between  Positivism  and  Theology  lies  not  in  the  subject-matter 
of  observation ;  for  all  things  thinkable  are  the  common 
subject-matter  of  both.  The  difference  lies  in  their  different 
canons  of  proof  and  methods  of  reasoning. 

What  is  the  meaning  of  "Naturalism"  being  confined  to 
the  World  which  is  revealed  to  us  through  "perception,''''  the 
World  which  is  the  subject-matter  of  the  "Natural  Sciences^'  ? 
"Perception"  ought  to  mean  the  apprehension  of  phenomena 
directly  or  indirectly  manifested  to  our  senses.  Now,  Posi- 
tivism does  not  confine  its  belief  to  any  such  limited  world. 
It  admits  all  suggestions  of  the  consciousness  of  every  kind 
as  amongst  the  material  for  meditation  and  reflection.  Every 
hypothesis,  every  mental  or  moral  instinct,  is  just  as  much  a 
legitimate  subject  of  study  and  logic  to  the  Positivist  as  an 
object  of  sight  or  smell.  All  "things"  are  within  the  sphere 
of  positive  philosophy  and  religion  for  what  they  are  worth. 
It  may  turn  out  that  they  are  waking  dreams,  with  no  proof 
of  reality  behind  them  or  within  them :  but  they  are  not  at 
all  outside  "the  subject-matter"  of  the  philosopher. 

Again,  what  is  the  meaning  of  the  "  subject-matter-  of  the 
Natural  Sciences"?  The  natural  sciences  mean,  and  ought 
to  mean,  the  physical  sciences  —  the  sciences  concerned  with 
the  interpretation  of  nature.  Now,  it  would  be  a  most 
enormous  misconception  to  assert  that  Positivism  is  only 
concerned  with  the  physical  sciences.  But  then  what  do 
the  "Natural  Sciences"  mean?  Is  Psychology  one  of  the 
"natural  sciences"?  Is  Ethics?  Are  the  facts  of  the  hu- 
man will,   of  Consciousness,  of  the  imagination,  and  the 


MR.  A.  BALFOUR'S   FOUNDATIONS  OF  BELIEF  319 

conscience  —  are  these  the  data  of  the  "Natural  Sciences"? 
Are  all  the  social  facts,  the  coincidences  and  uniformities  in 
social  progress,  also  the  data  of  the  "Natural  Sciences"? 
It  would  be  a  very  violent  use  of  language  to  call  our  reason- 
ing about  the  emotions,  about  ideas,  about  the  moral  and 
social  nature  of  Man,  the  relations  of  Man  to  the  World  — 
branches  of  the  Natural  Sciences.  Yet  Positivism  is  mainly 
and  supremely  occupied  with  these  very  things  —  things 
which,  only  by  an  outrageous  misuse  of  philosophical  lan- 
guage, can  be  called  the  subject-matter  of  the  "Natural 
Sciences"  —  the  world  known  to  us  through  "perception." 
To  make  "natural  science"  cover  the  whole  field  of  specu- 
lation about  the  mental,  moral,  and  social  nature  of  Man 
and  his  relation  to  the  World,  is  a  juggling  with  language. 
To  say  that  Positivism  excludes  from  its  subject-matter  the 
whole  field  of  such  speculations  is  a  manifest  misstatement  of 
notorious  facts. 

A  similar  ambiguity  and  petifio  principii  lurks  in  Mr. 
Balfour's  use  of  the  word  "phenomena."  Why  are  phe- 
nomena "things  and  events,  the  general  subject-matter  of 
Natural  Science"?  In  modern  philosophy,  and  certainly  in 
the  Posit ivist  Philosophy,  phenomena  mean  all  facts  what- 
ever of  which  we  can  take  cognisance,  which  we  perceive, 
meditate  or  reason  upon,  or  become  conscious  of.  As  Mr. 
Mill  said  long  ago,  "the  phenomena  with  which  the  science 
of  human  nature  is  conversant  are  the  thoughts,  feelings, 
and  actions  of  human  beings."  It  is  a  preposterous  abuse 
of  language  to  call  these  thoughts,  feelings,  and  actions  of 
human  beings  the  subject-matter  of  Natural  {i.e.  physical) 
Science.  Phenomena  comprehend  all  things  which  we  can 
perceive,  think  of,  feel,  or  be  conscious  of.  It  is  a  very  old 
and  almost  obsolete  device  of  theologians  to  limit  "phe- 
nomena" to  things  which  the  senses  perceive,  and  to  call 


320  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

"phenomenists"  those  who  subject  all  phenomena  whatever 
to  logical  verification.  It  is  not  the  "phenomena"  whereby 
schools  of  philosophy  difYer :  it  is  in  the  verification  of  phe- 
nomena and  the  conclusions  the  mind  infers  from  them. 

Why  does  Mr.  Balfour  talk  of  ''knowing  phenomena'^? 
We  do  not  know  phenomena.  We  perceive,  infer,  reflect 
upon,  or  become  conscious  of  phenomena.  What  we  know 
is  some  relation  between  the  phenomena,  some  truth  of 
which  the  phenomenon  is  the  first  term.  We  know  the 
syllogism,  we  do  not  know  the  names  in  our  predicate.  What 
is  the  meaning  of  "realities  which  are  not  phenomenal"? 
All  realities  are  and  must  be  phenomena.  God  and  the 
Soul,  says  Mr.  Balfour,  are  realities  which  are  not  phenom- 
enal. If  God  and  the  Soul  are  realities  they  are  certainly 
phenomenal,  for  they  can  be  shown  by  reasoning  to  exist. 
Even  if  they  are  inevitable  hypotheses,  to  which  the  con- 
sciousness instinctively  turns,  they  are  phenomena  of  con- 
sciousness. Much,  no  doubt,  may  be  said  as  to  whether 
they  are  hypotheses  which  can  be  verified,  or  are  simply 
answers  given  by  ancient  meditation  on  the  World  and  Man. 
So  far  as  Posit ivists  are  concerned,  they  express  no  definite 
opinion  as  to  the  first  of  these  realities;  but  very  stoutly 
maintain  the  reality  of  the  second,  as  abundantly  manifested 
both  in  reasoning  and  in  consciousness.  Positivists,  let  us 
assure  Mr.  Balfour,  have  a  very  strong  and  personal  convic- 
tion of  the  reality  of  the  phenomenon  they  call  the  Soul, 
resting  not  on  a  mythical  revelation,  but  on  a  logical  Psy- 
chology. 

In  his  fourth  chapter,  Mr.  Balfour  sums  up  the  conclusions 
of  Part  I.,  which,  he  says,  display  "the  pitiless  glare  of  a 
creed  like  this"  (Naturalism) ;  and  he  gives  in  a  short  "cate- 
chism of  the  future"  five  propositions  (A)  representing 
"current  teaching,"  and  five  propositions  contra  (B),  repre- 


MR.  A.  BALFOUR'S   FOUNDATIONS   OF   BELIEF  32 1 

senting  "the  naturalistic  theory."  Now  as  to  these  five 
dogmas  of  Naturalism,  marked  B,  Positivism  repudiates 
every  one  with  the  utmost  condemnation,  not  only  repudiates 
these  dogmas,  but  for  years  has  been  engaged  in  criticising 
and  exposing  them.  Whether  M.  Haeckel  and  his  so-called 
school  have  used  language  of  the  kind,  whether  some  Agnos- 
tics and  self-styled  Darwinians  or  Evolutionists  have  laid 
themselves  open  to  these  criticisms,  whether  Mr.  Kidd  or 
Mr.  Grant  Allen  and  others  have  so  represented  "natural 
selection"  and  so  forth,  we  need  not  inquire.  Certainly, 
Positivists  have  never  remotely  adopted  any  of  the  dogmas 
(B)  described  as  the  "naturalistic"  theory.  Any  one  who 
will  look  at  the  Positivist  Review  will  see  a  series  of  articles 
condemning  any  concession  to  any  of  these  "naturalist" 
doctrines.  Mr.  Balfour's  Part  I.,  therefore,  simply  ascribes 
to  Positivism  opinions  that  it  systematically  repudiates. 

To  take  these  five  points  of  the  "catechism  of  the  future" 
(B).  I.  Positivism  disclaims  any  such  assertion  as  that 
"reason  is  to  be  found  neither  in  the  beginning  of  things 
nor  in  their  end."  It  treats  as  ridiculous  any  assertion  what- 
ever about  the  beginning  of  things  or  the  end  of  things;  it 
rejects  as  a  silly  bit  of  Metaphysics  the  hypothesis  that  the 
Universe  is  the  casual  result  of  blind  chance,  and  it  has 
called  Atheism  the  most  irrational  form  of  thcologism.  Posi- 
tivism adopts  no  absolute  doctrine  of  Necessity,  nor  does  it 
take  upon  itself  to  deny  that  things  are  foreordained.  It 
leaves  the  origin  of  the  Universe  and  its  government  as  a 
mystery,  a  problem  as  insoluble  as  the  origin  of  God,  of 
Matter,  or  of  Man.  II.  Positivism  repudiates  as  unphilo- 
sophical  and  immoral  the  dogma  that  "the  universal  flux  is 
ordered  by  blind  causation  alone."  So  far  from  asserting 
that  throughout  the  world  "reason  is  absent,  so  also  is  love," 
Dr.  Bridges  in  the  Positivist  Review  showed  how  Mind  and 


322  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

Love  arc  perceptible  in  germ  from  the  dawn  of  life.  III.  Still 
more  monstrous  as  applied  to  Positivism  is  the  third  of  Mr. 
Balfour's  naturalistic  dogmas,  that  the  instincts,  appetites, 
moralities,  and  superstitions  evolved  in  the  course  of  man's 
social  development  "all  stand  on  an  equality."  Every  word 
that  Comte  ever  taught,  or  which  has  been  professed  by 
Positivists  is  directly  to  the  contrary.  The  Positivist  scheme 
of  moral  and  social  development  simply  rests  on  the  control 
of  the  lower  appetites,  instincts,  ideas,  and  beliefs  by  the 
higher.  IV.  Positivism  rejects  as  idle  metaphysical  puzzles, 
all  attempts  to  dogmatise  about  what  Reason  is  in  itself,  or 
what  Beauty  is  in  the  abstract.  It  does  not  call  the  first  an 
"expedient  for  preserving  the  race,"  nor  the  second  an 
"accident."  It  does  not  identify  reason  with  "physiological 
processes,"  nor  does  it  regard  Beauty  as  a  "poor  jest  played 
upon  us  by  Nature."  V.  Lastly,  Positivism  rejects  every 
one  of  the  "Naturalist"  dogmas  set  down  by  Mr.  Balfour 
in  B  5.  It  does  not  believe  that  "the  individual  perishes." 
It  does  believe  that  the  race  will  endure  without  practical 
limits.  It  asserts  that  all  conduct  affects  the  destinv  of  the 
race.  It  denies  that  our  ignorance  makes  us  helpless,  that 
our  conduct  was  determined  for  us  in  a  remote  past,  that  we 
are  impotent  to  foresee  the  consec|uences  of  our  conduct. 
Every  single  doctrine  which  Mr.  Balfour  puts  in  the  mouth 
of  his  "Naturalist"  catechumen  is  vehemently  denied  by 
Positivists.  And  yet  he  says  that  Positivism  and  Naturalism 
are  interchangeable  terms. 

The  Ethic  of  Positivism  is  not  derived  from  Utilitarianism, 
nor  from  Natural  Selection,  nor  the  survival  of  the  fittest, 
nor  from  evolution,  nor  from  physical  science.  It  is  an 
independent  science,  the  final,  the  noblest,  the  most  com- 
plex science :  its  doctrines  are  not  reducible  to  the  terms  of 
any  natural,  i.e.  physical,  science.     It  is  wholly  independent 


MR.  A.  BALFOUR'S   FOUNDATIONS   OF  BELIEF  323 

of  any  theory  of  the  Origin  of  the  Universe  or  any  scheme 
of  Universal  Evolution.  It  flows  from  the  natural  supremacy 
and  the  moral  nobility  of  the  social  emotions  of  mankind, 
the  highest  form  of  social  instincts  which  are  observable 
throughout  the  whole  living  series.  The  attempt  to  represent 
Positivist  ethics  as  a  device  for  securing  some  competitive 
advantage  in  the  struggle  for  existence  is  a  wM  hallucina- 
tion of  Mr.  Balfour's  own  mind,  as  absurd  as  if  one  weit  to 
say  that  Unionism,  Toryism,  Imperialism,  and  Anglicanism 
are  all  schemes  of  thought  which  may  be  more  properly 
termed  Socialism  —  the  ultimate  triumph  of  w^hich  must 
degrade  man  to  the  level  of  the  kangaroo  and  the  hedgehog. 
That  is  no  exaggeration  of  the  confusion  of  jNIr.  Balfour's 
logic  and  the  extravagance  of  Mr.  Balfour's  terrors. 

It  is  quite  tiresome  in  this  age  to  hear  again  that  stale 
theatrical  thunder  about  Free  Will  and  Necessity,  as  if  either 
view  could  decide,  or  even  affect,  any  philosophical  or  reli- 
gious problem.  Mr.  Balfour  repeats  in  the  tones  of  some 
eloquent  curate,  fresh  from  the  Honour  Schools,  the  same 
grand  phrases  about  the  Freedom  of  the  Will,  which  years 
ago  were  poured  forth  by  Mr.  Kingsley  and  Mr.  Martineau. 
All  healthy  minds  now  admit,  with  Mill  and  Henry  Sidg- 
wick,  that  there  are  insoluble  difficulties  in  the  way  of  any 
absolute  doctrine  either  of  Free  Will  or  of  Necessity,  and 
that  neither  doctrine  can  be  conclusive  either  in  Ethics  or 
in  Theology.  The  abstract  dogma  of  the  Freedom  of  Will 
is  in  logic  fatal  to  any  rational  system  of  Ethic  as  well  as  to 
any  logical  belief  in  Divine  Omniscience.  Positivism  at  any 
rate  asserts  no  abstract  dogma  of  Necessity.  And  it  is  droll 
indeed  to  find  the  old  puzzle,  about  the  Reign  of  Law  being 
irreconcilable  with  the  Freedom  of  the  human  Will,  now  put 
forward  as  a  refutation  of  Positivism.  Irreconcilable  as  these 
dogmas  may  be,   Positivists  fully  accept  both;    and  they 


324  PHILOSOPHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

have  long  ceased  to  trouble  their  minds  about  this  obsolete 
conundrum. 

Enough  has  been  said  to  show  that,  so  far  as  Positivism 
is  concerned,  Mr.  Balfour's  criticism  of  Naturalism,  which 
he  says  is  another  term  for  Positivism,  has  not  the  slightest 
application  or  meaning,  because  his  so-called  Naturalism 
and  true  Positivism  have  not  a  single  belief  in  common. 
Whether  any  school  or  thinker  holds  any  such  Naturalism 
at  all,  does  not  concern  us  in  this  review.  Whether  these 
criticisms  be  true  or  not,  they  are  certainly  not  new.  We 
have  lonsf  been  accustomed  to  the  same  conventional  dia- 
tribes.  It  remains  to  consider  Mr.  Balfour's  own  beliefs, 
or  rather  his  infidelities;  for  in  this  enlarged  edition  of 
Philosophic  Doubt,  he  frankly  says,  that  much  as  he  doubts 
about  Naturalism,  he  is  far  from  being  certain  about  any 
antidote  to  it.  The  whole  book  is  pervaded  with  the  spirit 
of  universal  scepticism  —  a  kind  of  despairing  quietism.  It 
is  a  prose  and  fi^i  de  siecle  version  of  Omar  Khayyam,  that 
all  we  do  and  think  vanishes  into  air  like  the  wind.  And 
so,  since  Man  is  a  bubble,  and  Life  a  jest,  let  us  —  doubt- 
ingly  and  mockingly  —  put  up  with  the  Archbishop  of  Can- 
terbury and  the  Thirty-nine  Articles;  for  these  can  hardly 
be  greater  shams  and  fallacies  than  ever>'thing  else  in  Heaven 
and  in  Earth. 


XX 

HARRIET  MARTINEAU'S  POSITIVE  PHILOSOPHY 

Tele  reprint  of  Miss  Martineau's  version  of  the  Philoso- 
phie  Positive  aflfords  a  convenient  occasion  for  a  few  words 
as  to  this  well-known  and  often  reprinted  work.^  It  has 
recently  been  added  to  the  great  series  of  Bohn's  Libraries, 
which  now  number  more  than  750  volumes.  The  present 
edition  is  in  three,  instead  of  two,  volumes  but  is  otherwise 
a  simple  reprint  of  Miss  Martineau's  book  of  1853.  It  is  a 
reprint,  not  a  revised  edition. 

My  own  part  in  this  publication  is  very  small  and  quite 
incidental,  and  can  be  disposed  of  in  few  words  I  was 
invited  to  write  a  short  biographical  and  bibliographical 
notice  of  Comte's  fundamental  work  in  a  limited  space, 
which  I  agreed  to  do  on  condition  of  being  free  to  add  a 
version  of  the  last  ten  pages  of  the  Philosophie,  vol.  vi., 
which  Miss  Martineau  omitted  for  the  reasons  stated  in  her 
preface.  I  accordingly  prepared  the  Introduction,  pp.  v.-xix. 
vol.  i.  of  the  reprint,  and  pp.  414-419  of  vol.  iii.  The  rest  of 
the  work  I  did  not  touch,  nor  did  I  see  it  in  proof. 

Some  persons  may  wish  to  have  a  revised  and  enlarged 
edition  of  Miss  Martineau's  version,  and  it  may  be  useful 
to  remind  them  of  what  this  would  imply.  Miss  Martineau's 
book  is  not  a  translation,  but  a  very  free  condensation.    It  is 

'  The  Positive  Philosophy  of  Augusle  Comte,  freely  translated  and  con- 
densed by  Harriet  Martineau,  with  an  introduction  by  Frederic  Harrison 
3  vols.,  G.   Bell  and  Sons,  1895.      New  volumes  of  Bohn's  Philosophical 
Library.     5s.  each  volume. 

325 


326  PHILOSOPHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

reduced  to  one-third  of  the  bulk  of  the  original,  and  in  this 
process  a  great  deal  of  Comte's  elaborate  provisos  and 
qualifications  disappear.  Careful  students  of  Comte  are 
well  aware  how  important  these  qualifications  are  for  any 
exact  understanding  of  Comte's  system.  Any  one  bold 
enough  to  revise  Miss  ISIartineau's  version  would  be  con- 
stantly confronted  with  the  problem,  which  of  the  condensed 
paragraphs  of  Miss  Martineau  stood  most  in  need  of  ampli- 
fication, which  he  could  leave  as  they  are,  and  how  far 
vividness  of  impression  should  be  sacrificed  to  accuracy  and 
completeness  of  the  author's  micaning.  Before  he  had 
solved  this  dilemm^a  to  his  satisfaction,  he  would  find  that 
he  had  greatly  increased  the  bulk,  and  had  entirely  lost  the 
vigour  of  her  condensation ;  and,  in  fact,  that  he  had  de- 
stroyed the  character  and  purpose  of  her  book.  A  revision 
of  Miss  Martineau  would  indeed  mean  a  rewriting  of  the 
whole.  There  is  perhaps  hardly  a  page  of  it  which  the 
translators  of  the  Politique  Positive  would  not  wish  to  vary 
or  even  to  recast.  But  this  is  a  very  big  task,  which  the 
present  writer  at  any  rate  was  not  invited  to  undertake  and 
would  hesitate  to  undertake.  One  day,  no  doubt,  the 
Philosophie  Positive  will  be  fully  and  exactly  translated ; 
but  there  is  no  prospect  of  this  being  undertaken  at  present, 
even  if  there  were  any  demand  for  it.  It  would  need  ample 
time  and  an  encyclopaedic  range  of  scientific  training.  ' 

It  might  seem  a  more  manageable  task  to  point  out  errors 
or  very  important  omissions  in  Miss  Martineau's  version. 
All  readers  of  the  original  are  well  aware  that  she  made 
some  serious  slips,  and,  in  search  of  a  short  cut  to  her  author's 
meaning,  often  produced  a  different  impression  from  that 
which  he  had  designed.  But  careful  collation  of  the  two 
texts,  French  original  and  English  condensation,  will  con- 
vince any  competent  reader  that  these  points  are  so  numer- 


MISS   MARTINEAU'S   COMTE  327 

ous,  or  else  are  so  closely  entwined  in  the  language  of  the 
version,  that  they  far  exceed  the  limits  or  the  resources  of 
any  possible  table  of  Corrigenda,  and  could  not  be  made 
intelligible  without  pages  of  new  matter.  It  would  be  use- 
less to  point  out  an  error  here  and  there,  which  would  imply 
approval  of  the  remainder  unnoticed.  Every  careful  reader 
of  Miss  Alartineau's  version  knows,  for  instance,  that  in 
speaking  of  the  organisation  of  the  Catholic  Church  (vol.  iii. 
p.  93)  she  wrote  that  it  caused  "the  superiors  to  be  chosen 
by  the  inferiors,''^  whereas  Comte  obviously  said  the  con- 
trary. There  are  not  many  slips  of  this  kind,  but  few  of 
them  are  so  manifest  and  so  easily  corrected.  Again,  in  a 
well-known  place  she  substitutes  the  name  of  Shakespeare 
for  that  of  Corneille.  But  as  Comte  used  Corneille's  name 
simply  as  an  example  of  an  eminent  dramatist,  the  change 
is  of  no  great  consequence.  On  the  whole,  a  careful  reader 
will  find  that  his  list  of  corrigenda  et  addenda  runs  curiously 
near  to  become  a  scheme  of  rewriting  the  book. 

Miss  Martineau's  remarkable  paraphrase  must  stand  by 
itself  and  remain  what  she  made  it.  It  can  no  more  be 
revised  or  rewritten  than  the  original  itself  could  be.  It 
was  made  fifty-three  years  ago,  when  she  knew  nothing  else 
of  Comte's  writing,  and  before  the  completion  of  the  Poli- 
tique Positive.  It  is  in  vain  for  those  who  have  assimilated 
Comte's  later  works  to  require  from  Miss  Martineau  what 
she  had  no  qualifications  to  do,  and  what  she  never  under- 
took or  intended  to  do.  Comte  may  have  been  somewhat 
hasty  or  indulgent  in  the  praises  he  gave  her  work,  and  far 
too  liberal  in  substituting  her  condensation  for  his  own  book. 
He  has  been  scandalously  repaid  for  his  generosity  by  pre- 
tended philosophers  who  have  elaborately  criticised  a  work 
of  which  they  never  read  a  line  in  the  original,  and  which 
they  know  only  by  a  paraphrase.     But  the  fact  stands  that 


328  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

in  all  subsequent  editions  of  the  Positivist  Library,  Miss 
Martineau's  condensation  is  inserted  and  Comte's  Philoso- 
phie  Positive  is  not.  And  her  version  has  been  retranslated 
into  French,  and  is  adopted  by  Comte's  French  followers. 
At  the  present  day,  therefore,  this  version  cannot  be  said  to 
have  been  superseded,  and  it  is  not  likely  to  be  rewritten  or 
revised. 

A  much  more  serious  problem  would  remain.  Would  it 
be  worth  while  to  attempt  a  revision  of  Miss  Martineau's 
version  without  attempting  to  revise  Auguste  Comte's  own 
original?  And  who  is  prepared  to  undertake  this  task? 
The  rapid  progress  of  the  physical  and  social  sciences  within 
the  last  two  generations,  together  with  the  multiplication  and 
improvement  in  our  mechanical  instruments  of  knowledge, 
have  so  largely  added  to  our  means  of  special  research  that 
much  of  Comte's  Philosophie  is  based  upon  conceptions  in 
exact  science  which  are  now  practically  obsolete.  This  has 
not  destroyed  its  value  as  Philosophy,  but  it  effectually  pre- 
vents us  from  treating  it  as  if  it  were  a  scientific  manual,  a 
text-book  of  encyclopaedic  knowledge  up  to  date.  This  it  is 
not,  and  was  never  intended  to  be.  And  Positivism  would 
only  end  in  a  degrading  obscurantism,  worse  than  any  theo- 
logical reaction,  if  it  led  its  votaries  into  a  superstitious  idea 
that  Auguste  Comte,  having  appeared  on  earth,  had  finally 
closed  the  book  of  science  in  the  year  1830. 

Remember  that  the  Mathematics  of  the  Philosophie  Posi- 
tive appeared  in  1830,  the  Astronomy  and  Physics  in  1835, 
the  Chemistry  and  Biology  in  1838,  so  that  the  physical 
science  of  these  three  volumes  is  almost  or  quite  seventy 
years  old.  Recall  what  has  been  accomplished  in  these 
seventy  years  by  electricity,  photography,  spectrum  analysis, 
modern  measures  of  heat,  weight,  and  force,  molecular 
analysis.  Embryology,  Bacteriology,  the  theory  of  Cell  and 


MISS   MARTINEAU'S   COMTE  329 

Protoplasm  and  Evolution,  —  recall  the  discoveries  of  the 
Herschels,  of  Helmholtz,  KirchhofT,  Thomson,  Dumas,  Pas- 
teur, Owen,  Darwin  —  and  we  shall  feel  how  great  an  epoch 
separates  the  science  of  1830  from  the  science  of  to-day. 
Comte  made  no  attempt  to  present  mankind  with  a  vade 
mecum  of  science  in  the  year  1830.  But  in  attempting  a  co- 
ordination or  philosophy  of  the  sciences,  in  tracing  their 
filiation,  evolution,  and  mutual  relations,  he  could  only  start 
from  the  state  of  contemporary  science,  that  is,  the  state  of 
science  seventy  years  ago.  The  immense  improvements  in 
our  means  of  observation,  and  the  discoveries  of  the  last 
seventy  years,  have  not  perhaps  effected  a  revolution  in  our 
knowledge  so  great  as  some  specialists  pretend,  and  as  the 
ignorant  believe.  But  of  course  they  have  in  many  things 
altered  the  point  of  view  of  competent  men  of  science. 

In  carrying  out  his  wonderful  colligation  of  the  sciences, 
Auguste  Comte  was  at  times  too  confident  of  his  data,  and 
he  undoubtedly  hazarded  some  premature  generalisations; 
and,  in  two  sciences,  at  least,  he  had  little  to  go  upon  save  con- 
clusions that  have  in  our  day  been  virtually  recast,  and  in  part 
superseded.  These  two  sciences  are  Physics  and  Chemistry. 
In  Mathematics  his  data  need  no  modification  at  all:  in 
Astronomy  very  little :  and  even  in  Biology  his  results  are 
far  less  affected  bv  modern  research  than  followers  of  Haeckel 
and  of  Huxley  might  be  led  to  suppose.  Both  the  amount 
and  the  effect  on  his  speculations  of  Comte's  scientific  short- 
comings have  been  much  exaggerated  by  some  of  his  most 
hostile  critics.  As  his  business  was  not  to  teach  the  special 
sciences,  but  to  initiate  a  scheme  of  general  philosophy,  he  was 
not  called  upon  to  dogmatise  on  specific  observations,  but  to 
trace  analogies,  classify,  and  co-ordinate  general  laws.  In  do- 
ing this  the  use  of  an  illustration  or  a  deduction  now  shown 
to  be  obsolete,  signifies  less  than  would  appear  at  first  sight. 


330  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

A  great  deal  has  been  said  about  Comte's  rather  prema- 
ture remark  "that  we  can  never  know  the  chemical  com- 
position of  the  stars."  It  is  the  fashion  to  refer  triumphantly 
to  the  revelations  of  the  Spectrum.  But  if  we  look  at  what 
Comte  says  in  his  opening  remarks  on  Astronomy  (vol.  ii. 
chap,  i.,  1835)  we  shall  see  that  his  general  conception  is  not 
unworthy  of  a  philosopher.  In  Astronomy,  he  says,  our  sole 
method  of  research  is  limited  by  our  means  of  visual  obser- 
vation. This  of  course  remains  true.  "We  may  conceivably 
ascertain,"  he  says,  "the  form,  distances,  size,  and  move- 
ments of  the  heavenly  bodies.  But  we  never  can  study  their 
chemical  composition,  their  mineralogical  structure,  and  still 
less  the  nature  of  any  organic  bodies  on  their  surface.  That 
is  to  say,  our  positive  knowledge  of  the  stars  is  limited  to  the 
geometric  and  mechanical  phenomena  they  exhibit,  and  we 
cannot  extend  to  them  the  physical,  chemical,  physiological, 
and  even  social  form  of  knowledge  that  we  can  obtain  from 
objects  within  our  other  means  of  observation."  Now  here 
is  an  obvious  error,  in  so  far  as  the  spectrum  does  lead  us 
to  infer  the  presence  in  the  stars  of  various  gases  and  ele- 
ments, though  we  are  only  just  enabled  to  infer  that  in  a 
general  way.  This  hardly  amounts  to  being  able  "to  study 
the  chemical  composition"  of  these  bodies  with  all  the  re- 
sources of  the  laboratory.  It  is  a  wonderful  and  interesting 
discovery,  but  it  does  not  go  very  far.  It  falls  very  far  short 
of  any  effective  Chemistry  of  the  Stars,  and  one  of  the  greatest 
of  living  authorities  has  warned  the  British  Association  how 
very  cautious  astronomers  must  be  in  attempting  to  generalise 
too  definitely  as  to  the  indications  of  the  Spectrum.  Comte 
certainly  made  an  error,  and  a  rash  forecast,  just  as  a  few 
years  ago  a  philosopher  would  have  erred  who  should  have 
said  we  shall  never  be  able  to  see  into  the  skeleton  of  living 
beings !     But   this  error  of   Comte   does  not   destroy  —  it 


MISS   MARTINEAU'S   COMTE  33 1 

hardly  weakens  —  the  value  of  his  general  remarks  on  the 
field  of  Astronomy. 

There  is  no  doubt  a  want  of  philosophical  caution  in  the 
negative  prophecy  that  Comte  hazarded;  for  philosophers, 
like  politicians,  ought  never  to  use  the  word  never  —  "or 
hardly  ever."  But  there  are  far  more  doubtful  statements 
than  this  to  be  found  in  the  second  and  third  volumes  of 
Comte's  Philosophic.  I  am  not  disposed,  for  my  part,  to 
regard  the  Physique  and  the  Chimie  as  anything  more  than 
an  interesting  sketch  of  a  possible  synthesis  of  the  two 
sciences  —  a  sketch  which  now  has  mainly  a  historic  value. 
Both  these  sciences  have  been  practically  recast  since  the 
last  sixty  years ;  and  it  is  safer  to  study  the  more  general 
outline  of  them  given  in  the  Politique  Positive,  where  they 
are  condensed  as  Cosmologie  in  less  than  fifty  pages.  The 
Biologic,  in  spite  of  all  that  the  science  owes  to  the  biologists 
of  the  last  two  generations  in  Europe,  is  no  doubt  much  less 
affected  than  the  Physics  or  the  Chemistry.  But  we  had  better 
accept  it  as  a  general  proviso  in  reading  the  Philosophic  Positive 
that  the  co-ordination  of  the  Physical  Sciences  there  sketched 
out  was  necessarily  based  on  data  now  more  or  less  obsolete. 

But,  I  repeat,  the  work  of  Comte  was  to  initiate  a  Philoso- 
phy, not  to  teach  any  special  science.  No  one  denies  that 
the  philosophical  intuitions  of  Aristotle  have  profound  value 
and  interest  for  us  to-day,  though  based  on  physical  and 
biological  resources  so  rudimentar}^  as  his  were.  This  is 
even  more  true  of  the  conceptions  of  Hippocrates  and  Archi- 
medes, in  spite  of  their  very  primitive  science.  The  same  is 
true  of  the  suggestions  of  Bacon  and  of  Descartes,  whose 
works  are  strewn  with  hypotheses  that  we  now  know  to  be 
wildly  absurd.  Newton's  speculations  about  Light  and 
Molecular  Physics  are  not  worthless,  although  they  are  not 
true.     Nor  are  the  physical  and  biological  thoughts  of  Goethe 


332  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

rubbish,  because  he  lived  before  HelmhoUz  and  Darwin.  We 
need  not  suppose  that  Comte's  errors  and  ignorances  are 
anything  like  so  startling  as  those  of  Aristotle,  Bacon,  and 
Descartes.  All  the  sciences  were  in  a  state  far  more  ready 
for  systematisation  in  the  days  of  Comte  than  they  were  in 
the  infancy  of  science  in  the  times  of  these  mighty  philoso- 
phers. But  it  would  be  ridiculous  and  degrading  to  us  to 
hesitate  to  admit  that  there  are  errors  and  ignorances  in  the  re- 
view of  the  physical  sciences  made  by  Comte  seventy  years  ago. 
As  to  the  special  contribution  of  Comte  to  philosophy  — 
his  institution  of  Sociology,  which  occupies  three  of  his  six 
volumes  in  the  Philosophie,  and  nearly  the  whole  of  the  four 
volumes  of  the  Politique  —  something  else  has  to  be  said. 
Here  again,  we  must  remember  that  Comte  claimed  to  have 
instituted  this  new  science  of  society,  not  to  have  constituted 
it.  Again,  I  am  not  prepared  to  deny  that  it  contains  de- 
fective and  unproven  generalisations  —  errors  and  ignorances, 
if  it  is  wished  so  to  call  them.  It  would  be  ridiculous  and 
degrading  in  us  to  suppose  it  to  be  an  infallible  and  final 
revelation  of  truth.  But  its  shortcomiings  are  not  the  result 
of  subsequent  discoveries  or  the  labours  of  sociologists  since 
the  time  of  Comte.  The  social  science  of  the  Philosophie 
was  completed  in  1842,  and  that  of  the  Politique  in  1854. 
And  in  spite  of  the  researches  in  History  and  in  Sociology 
of  the  last  fifty  years,  I  do  not  see  that  the  data  used  by 
Comte  have  been  very  materially  amended  or  recast.  This, 
however,  is  the  case  with  the  second  and  third  volume  of 
his  Philosophie;  and  they  must  always  be  studied  subject 
to  this  qualification.  The  great  achievement  of  the  Philoso- 
phic will  always  be  found  in  the  three  latter  volumes,  in  the 
masterly  scheme  for  the  new  science  of  Sociology,  and  what 
Mr.  Mill  was  forced  to  call  "the  extraordinary  merit  of  his 
historical  analysis." 


XXI 

THE   GHOST   OF   RELIGION 

This  and  the  following  essay  form  the  discussion  with  Mr. 
Herbert  Spencer  and  others  which  appeared  in  the  ^^Nine- 
teenth Century,''^  1884,  vols.  xv.  and  xvi.  {Nos.  83,  85, 
88,  91,  93).  Mr.  Spencer  had  my  essays  and  his  own 
reprinted,  with  notes  by  himself  and  his  friends,  New 
York,  1885.  After  the  lapse  of  twenty-three  years,  and 
careful  reconsideration  of  all  the  essays,  I  reprint  my  own. 
I  have  again  carefully  studied  Mr.  Spencer^s  replies  and 
his  defence,  but  I  find  no  reason  to  retract  anything  I 
urged,  or  to  modify  anything  here  set  forth. 

In  the  eighty-third  number  of  the  Nineteenth  Century, 
vol.  XV.,  1884,  there  was  to  be  found  an  article  on  Religion 
which  justly  awakened  a  profound  and  sustained  interest. 
The  creed  of  Agnosticism  was  there  formulated  anew  by  the 
acknowledged  head  of  the  Evolution  philosophy,  with  a 
definiteness  such  as  perhaps  it  never  wore  before.  To  my 
mind  there  is  nothing  in  the  whole  range  of  modern  religious 
discussion  more  cogent  and  more  suggestive  than  the  array 
of  conclusions,  the  final  outcome  of  which  is  marshalled  in 
those  twelve  pages.  It  is  the  last  word  of  the  Agnostic 
philosophy  in  its  long  controversy  with  Theology.  That 
word  is  decisive,  and  it  is  hard  to  conceive  how  Theology 
can  rally  for  another  bout  from  such  a  sorites  of  dilemma  as 
is  there  presented.  My  own  humble  purpose  is  not  to  criti- 
cise this  paper,  but  to  point  its  practical  moral,  and,  if  I 

333 


,,1  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

may,  to  add  to  it  a  rider  of  my  own.  As  a  summary  of 
philosophical  conclusions  on  the  theological  problem,  it 
seems  to  me  frankly  unanswerable.  Speaking  generally,  I 
shall  now  dispute  no  part  of  it  but  one  word,  and  that  is  the 
title.  It  is  entitled  "Religion."  To  me  it  is  rather  the 
Ghost  of  Religion.  Religion  as  a  living  force  lies  in  a  dif- 
ferent sphere. 

The  essay,  which  is  packed  with  thought  to  a  degree  un- 
usual even  with  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,  contains  evidently 
three  parts.  The  first  deals  with  the  historical  Evolution 
of  Religion,  of  which  Mr.  Spencer  traces  the  germs  in  the 
primitive  belief  in  ghosts.  The  second  arrays  the  moral  and 
intellectual  dilemmas  involved  in  all  anthropomorphic  theol- 
ogy into  one  long  catena  of  difficulty,  out  of  which  it  is  hard 
to  conceive  any  free  mind  emerging  with  success.  The  third 
part  deals  with  the  evolution  of  Religion  in  the  future,  and 
formulates,  more  precisely  than  has  ever  yet  been  effected, 
the  positive  creed  of  Agnostic  philosophy. 

Has,  then,  the  Agnostic  a  positive  creed?  It  would  seem 
so;  for  Mr.  Spencer  brings  us  at  last  "to  the  one  absolute 
certainty,  the  presence  of  an  Infinite  and  Eternal  Energy, 
from  which  all  things  proceed."  But  let  no  one  suppose 
that  this  is  merely  a  new  name  for  the  Great  First  Cause  of 
so  many  theologies  and  metaphysics.  In  spite  of  the  capital 
letters,  and  the  use  of  theological  terms  as  old  as  Isaiah  or 
Athanasius,  Mr.  Spencer's  Energy  has  no  analogy  with  God. 
It  is  Eternal,  Infinite,  and  Incomprehensible;  but  still  it  is 
not  He,  but  It.  It  remains  always  Energy,  Force,  nothing 
anthropomorphic;  such  as  electricity,  or  anything  else  that 
we  might  conceive  as  the  ultimate  basis  of  all  the  physical 
forces.  None  of  the  positive  attributes  which  have  ever  been 
predicated  of  God  can  be  used  of  this  Energy.  Neither 
goodness,  nor  wisdom,  nor  justice,  nor  consciousness,  nor 


THE   GHOST  OF   RELIGION  335 

will,  nor  life,  can  be  ascribed,  even  by  analogy,  to  this  Force. 
Now  a  force  to  which  we  cannot  apply  the  ideas  of  goodness, 
wisdom,  justice,  consciousness,  or  life,  any  more  than  we  can 
to  a  circle,  is  certainly  not  God,  has  no  analogy  with  God, 
nor  even  with  what  Pope  has  called  the  "Great  First  Cause, 
least  understood."  It  shares  some  of  the  negative  attributes 
of  God  and  First  Cause,  but  no  positive  one.  It  is,  in  fact, 
only  the  Unknowable  a  little  more  defined ;  though  I  do  not 
remember  that  Mr.  Spencer,  or  any  evolution  philosopher, 
has  ever  formulated  the  Unknowable  in  terms  with  so  deep 
a  theological  ring  as  we  hear  in  the  phrase  "Infinite  and 
Eternal  Energy,  from  which  all  things  proceed." 

The  terms  do  seem,  perhaps,  rather  needlessly  big  and 
absolute.  And  fully  accepting  Mr.  Spencer's  logical  canons, 
one  does  not  see  why  it  should  be  called  an  "absolute  cer- 
tainty." "Practical  belief"  satisfies  me;  and  I  doubt  the 
legitimacy  of  substituting  for  it  "absolute  certainty."  "In- 
finite" and  "Eternal,"  also,  can  mean  to  Mr.  Spencer  noth- 
ing more  than  "to  which  we  know  no  limits,  no  beginning  or 
end,"  and,  for  my  part,  I  prefer  to  say  this.  Again,  "an 
Energy"  —  why  an  Energy?  The  Unknowable  may  cer- 
tainly consist  of  more  than  one  energy.  To  assert  the  pres- 
ence of  one  uniform  energy  is  to  profess  to  know  something 
very  important  about  the  Unknowable  :  that  it  is  homogeneous, 
and  even  identical,  throughout  the  Universe.  And  then, 
"from  which  all  things  proceed"  is  perhaps  a  rather  equivo- 
cal reversion  to  the  theologic  type.  In  the  Athanasian  Creed 
the  Third  Person  "proceeds"  from  the  First  and  the  Second. 
But  this  process  has  always  been  treated  as  a  mystery;  and 
it  would  be  safer  to  avoid  the  phrases  of  mysticism.  Let  us 
keep  the  old  words,  for  we  all  mean  much  the  same  thing; 
and  I  prefer  to  put  it  thus.  All  obsen^ations  and  meditation, 
Science  and  Philosophy,  bring  us  "to  the  practical  belief  ihai 


336  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

man  is  ever  in  the  presence  of  some  energy  or  energies,  of  which 
he  knows  nothing,  and  to  which  therefore  he  would  be  wise  to 
assign  no  hmits,  conditions,  or  functions."  This  is,  doubt- 
less, what  Mr.  Spencer  himself  means.  For  my  part,  I  pre- 
fer his  old  term,  the  Unknowable.  Though  I  have  always 
thought  that  it  would  be  more  philosophical  not  to  assert 
of  the  Unknown  that  it  is  Unknowable.  And,  indeed,  I 
would  rather  not  use  the  capital  letter,  but  stick  hterally  to  our 
evidence,  and  say  frankly  "the  unknown," 

Thus  viewed,  the  attempt,  so  to  speak,  to  put  a  little  unction 
into  the  Unknowable  is  hardly  worth  the  philosophical  in- 
accuracy it  involves ;  and  such  is  the  drawback  to  any  use  of 
picturesque  language.  So  stated,  the  positive  creed  of  Ag- 
nosticism still  retains  its  negative  character.  It  has  a  series 
of  propositions  and  terms,  every  one  of  which  is  a  negation. 
A  friend  of  my  own,  who  was  much  pressed  to  say  how  much 
of  the  Athanasian  Creed  he  still  accepted,  once  said  that  he 
clung  to  the  idea  "that  there  was  a  sort  of  a  something." 
In  homely  words  such  as  the  unlearned  can  understand,  that 
is  precisely  what  the  religion  of  the  Agnostic  comes  to,  "the 
belief  that  there  is  a  sort  of  a  something,  about  which  we  can 
know  nothing." 

Now  let  us  profess  that,  as  a  philosophical  answer  to  the 
theological  problem,  that  is  entirely  our  own  position.  The 
Positivist  answer  is  of  course  the  same  as  the  Agnostic  answer. 
Why,  then,  do  we  object  to  be  called  Agnostics?  Simply 
because  Agnostic  is  only  dog-Greek  for  "don't  know,"  and 
we  have  no  taste  to  be  called  "don't  knows."  The  Church 
organ  calls  us  Agnostics,  but  that  is  only  by  way  of  prejudice. 
Our  religion  does  not  consist  in  a  comprehensive  negation; 
we  are  not  for  ever  replying  to  the  theological  problem; 
we  are  quite  unconcerned  by  the  theological  problem,  and 
have  something  that  we  do  care  for,  and  do  know.     English- 


THE  GHOST  OF  RELIGION  337 

men  are  Europeans,  and  many  of  them  are  Christians,  and 
they  usually  prefer  to  call  themselves  Englishmen,  Christians, 
or  the  hke,  rather  than  non-Asiatics  or  anti-Mahometans, 
Some  people  still  prefer  to  call  themselves  Protestants  rather 
than  Christians,  but  the  taste  is  dying  out,  except  amongst 
Irish  Orangemen,  and  even  the  Nonconformist  newspaper 
has  been  induced  by  Mr.  JMatthew  Arnold  to  drop  its  famous 
motto:  "The  dissidence  of  Dissent,  and  the  Protestantism 
of  the  Protestant  religion."  For  a  man  to  say  that  his  reli- 
gion is  Agnosticism  is  simply  the  sceptical  equivalent  of  saying 
that  his  religion  is  Protestantism.  Both  mean  that  his  reH- 
gion  is  to  deny  and  to  differ.  But  this  is  not  religion.  The 
business  of  religion  is  to  affirm  and  to  unite,  and  nothing  can 
be  religion  but  that  which  at  once  affirms  truth  and  unites 
men. 

The  purpose  of  the  present  essay  is  to  show  that  Agnosticism, 
though  a  vahd  and  final  answer  to  the  theological  or  ontological 
problem  —  "what  is  the  ultimate  cause  of  the  world  and  of 
man?"  —  is  not  a  religion  nor  the  shadow  of  a  religion.  It 
offers  none  of  the  rudiments  or  elements  of  religion,  and 
religion  is  not  to  be  found  in  that  line  at  all.  It  is  the  mere 
disembodied  spirit  of  dead  religion  :  as  was  said  at  the  outset, 
it  is  the  ghost  of  religion.  Agnosticism,  perfectly  legitimate 
as  the  true  answer  of  science  to  an  effete  question,  has  shown 
us  that  religion  is  not  to  be  found  anywhere  within  the  realm 
of  Law.  Having  brought  us  to  the  answer,  "no  cause  that 
we  know  of,"  it  is  laughable  to  call  that  negation  religion, 
Mr.  Mark  Pattison,  one  of  the  acutest  minds  of  modem  Ox- 
ford, rather  oddly  says  that  the  idea  of  deity  has  now  been 
"defecated  to  a  pure  transparency."  The  evolution  philoso- 
phy goes  a  step  further  and  defecates  the  idea  of  cause  to  a 
pure  transparency.  Theology  and  ontology  alike  end  in  the 
Everlastin'f  No  with  which  science  confronts  all  their  asser- 


338  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

tions.  But  how  whimsical  is  it  to  tell  us  that  religion,  which 
cannot  find  any  resting-place  in  theology  or  ontology,  is  to 
find  its  true  home  in  the  Everlasting  No !  That  which  is 
defecated  to  a  pure  transparency  can  never  supply  a  reli- 
gion to  any  human  being  but  a  philosopher  constructing  a 
system.  It  is  quite  conceivable  that  religion  is  to  end  with 
theology,  and  both  might  in  the  course  of  evolution  become 
an  anachronism.  But  if  religion  there  is  still  to  be,  it  cannot 
be  found  in  this  No-man's-land  and  Know-nothing  creed. 
Better  bury  religion  at  once  than  let  its  ghost  walk  uneasy  in 
our  dreams. 

The  true  lesson  is  that  we  must  hark  back,  and  leave  the 
realm  of  cause.  The  accident  of  religion  has  been  mistaken 
for  the  essence  of  religion.  The  essence  of  religion  is  not  to 
answer  a  question,  but  to  govern  and  unite  men  and  societies 
by  giving  them  common  beliefs  and  duties.  Theologies  tried 
to  do  this,  and  long  did  it,  by  resting  on  certain  answers  to 
certain  questions.  The  progress  of  thought  has  upset  one 
answer  after  another,  and  now  the  final  verdict  of  philosophy 
is  that  all  the  answers  are  unmeaning,  and  that  no  rational 
answer  can  be  given.  It  follows,  then,  that  questions  and 
answers,  being  but  accidents  of  religion,  must  both  be  given 
up.  A  base  of  belief  and  duty  must  be  looked  for  elsewhere, 
and  when  this  has  been  found,  then  again  religion  will  succeed 
in  governing  and  uniting  men.  Where  is  this  base  to  be 
found  ?  Since  the  realm  of  Cause  has  failed  to  give  us  foot- 
hold, we  must  fall  back  upon  the  Realm  of  Law  —  social, 
moral,  and  mental  law,  and  not  merely  physical.  Religion 
consists,  not  in  answering  certain  questions,  but  in  making 
men  of  a  certain  quahty.  And  the  law,  moral,  mental,  social, 
is  pre-eminently  the  field  wherein  men  may  be  governed  and 
united.  Hence  to  the  religion  of  Cause  there  succeeds  the  reli- 
gion of  Law.    But  the  religion  of  Law  or  Science  is  Positivism. 


THE  GHOST  OF   RELIGION  339 

It  is  no  part  of  my  purpose  to  criticise  Mr.  Spencer's 
memorable  essay,  except  so  far  as  it  is  necessary  to  show  that 
that  which  is  a  sound  philosophical  conclusion  is  not  religion, 
simply  by  reason  that  it  relates  to  the  subject-matter  of  the- 
ology. But  a  few  words  may  be  suffered  as  to  the  historical 
evolution  of  religion.  To  many  persons  it  will  sound  rather 
whimsical,  and  possibly  almost  a  sneer,  to  trace  the  germs 
of  religion  to  the  ghost-theory.  Our  friends  of  the  Psychical 
Research  will  prick  up  their  ears,  and  expect  to  be  taken  au 
grand  serieux.  But  the  conception  is  a  thoroughly  solid  one, 
and  of  most  suggestive  kind.  Beyond  all  doubt,  the  hypothe- 
sis of  quasi-human  immaterial  spirits  working  within  and 
behind  familiar  phenomena  did  take  its  rise  from  the  idea  of 
the  other  self  which  the  imagination  continually  presents  to 
the  early  reflections  of  man.  And,  beyond  all  doubt,  the 
phenomena  of  dreams,  and  the  gradual  construction  of  a 
theory  of  ghosts,  is  a  very  impressive  and  vivid  form  of  the 
notion  of  the  other  self.  It  would,  I  think,  be  wrong  to  assert 
that  it  is  the  only  form  of  the  notion,  and  one  can  hardly  sup- 
pose that  Mr.  Spencer  would  limit  himself  to  that.  But,  in 
any  case,  the  construction  of  a  coherent  theory  of  ghosts  is 
a  typical  instance  of  a  belief  in  a  quasi-human  spirit-world. 
Glorify  and  amplify  this  idea,  and  apply  it  to  the  whole  of 
nature,  and  we  get  a  god-world,  a  multitude  of  superhuman 
divine  spirits. 

That  is  the  philosophical  explanation  of  the  rise  of  theology, 
of  the  peopling  of  Nature  with  divine  spirits.  But  docs  it 
explain  the  rise  of  Religion?  No,  for  theology  and  religion 
are  not  conterminous.  Mr.  Spencer  has  unwittingly  conceded 
to  the  divines  that  which  they  assume  so  confidently  —  that 
theology  is  the  same  thing  as  religion,  and  that  there  was  no 
religion  at  all  until  there  was  a  belief  in  superhuman  spirits 
within  and  behind  Nature.     This  is  obviously  an  oversight. 


340  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

We  have  to  go  very  much  further  back  for  the  genesis  of  reh- 
gion.  There  were  countless  centuries  of  time,  and  there  were, 
and  there  are,  countless  millions  of  men  for  whom  no  doctrine 
of  superhuman  spirits  ever  took  coherent  form.  In  all  these 
ages  and  races,  probably  by  far  the  most  numerous  that  our 
planet  has  witnessed,  there  was  religion  in  all  kinds  of  definite 
form.  Comte  calls  it  Fetichism  —  terms  are  not  important : 
roughly,  we  may  call  it  Nature-worship.  The  religion  in  all 
these  types  was  the  belief  and  worship  not  of  spirits  of  any  kind, 
not  of  any  immaterial,  imagined  being  inside  things,  but  of 
the  actual  visible  things  themselves  —  trees,  stones,  rivers, 
mountains,  earth,  fire,  stars,  sun,  and  sky.  Some  of  the  most 
abiding  and  powerful  of  all  religions  have  consisted  in  elabo- 
rate worship  of  these  physical  objects  treated  frankly  as  physi- 
cal objects,  without  trace  of  ghost,  spirit,  or  god.  To  say 
nothing  of  fire-worship,  river-,  and  tree-worship,  the  venerable 
religion  of  China,  far  the  most  vast  of  all  systematic  religions, 
is  wholly  based  on  reverence  for  Earth,  Sky,  and  ancestors 
treated  objectively,  and  not  as  the  abode  of  subjective  im- 
material spirits. 

Hence  the  origin  of  religion  is  to  be  sought  in  the  countless 
ages  before  the  rise  of  theology;  before  spirits,  ghosts,  or 
gods  ever  took  definite  form  in  the  human  mind.  The  primi- 
tive uncultured  man  frankly  worshipped  external  objects  in 
love  and  in  fear,  ascribing  to  them  quasi-human  powers  and 
feelings.  All  that  we  read  about  Animism,  ghosts,  spirits, 
and  universal  ideas  of  godhead  in  this  truly  primitive  stage  are 
metaphysical  assumptions  of  men  trying  to  read  the  ideas  of 
later  epochs  into  the  facts  of  an  earlier  epoch.  Nothing  is 
more  certain  than  that  man  everywhere  started  with  a  simple 
worship  of  natural  objects.  And  the  bearing  of  this  on  the 
future  of  religion  is  decisive.  The  religion  of  man  in  the  vast 
cycles  of  primitive  ages  was  reverence  for  Nature  as  influencing 


THE  GHOST  OF   RELIGION  34 1 

Man.  The  religion  of  man  in  the  vast  cycles  that  are  to  come 
will  be  the  reverence  for  Humanity  as  supported  by  Nature. 

The  religion  of  man  in  the  twenty  or  thirty  centuries  of 
Theology  was  reverence  for  the  assumed  authors  or  controllers 
of  Nature.  But,  that  assumption  having  broken  down,  reli- 
gion does  not  break  up  with  it.  On  the  contrary,  it  enters  on 
a  far  greater  and  more  potent  career,  inasmuch  as  the  natural 
emotions  of  the  human  heart  are  now  combined  with  the  cer- 
tainty of  scientific  knowledge.  The  final  religion  of  en- 
lightened man  is  the  systematised  and  scientific  form  of  the 
spontaneous  religion  of  natural  man.  Both  rest  on  the  same 
elements  —  belief  in  the  Power  which  controls  his  life,  and 
grateful  reverence  for  the  Power  so  acknowledged.  The 
primitive  man  thought  that  Power  to  be  the  object  of  Nature 
affecting  Man.  The  cultured  man  knows  that  Power  to  be 
Humanity  itself,  controlling  and  controlled  by  nature  accord- 
ing to  natural  law.  The  transitional  and  perpetually  chang- 
ing creed  of  Theology  has  been  an  interlude.  Agnosticism 
has  uttered  its  epilogue.  But  Agnosticism  is  no  more  reli- 
gion than  differentiation  or  the  nebular  hypothesis  is  religion. 

We  have  onlv  to  see  what  are  the  elements  and  ends  of 
religion  to  recognise  that  we  cannot  find  it  in  the  negative 
and  the  unknown.  In  any  reasonable  use  of  language  re- 
ligion implies  some  kind  of  belief  in  a  Power  outside  our- 
selves, some  kind  of  awe  and  gratitude  felt  for  that  Power, 
some  kind  of  influence  exerted  by  it  over  our  hves.  There 
are  always  in  some  sort  these  three  elements  —  belief,  wor- 
ship, conduct.  A  religion  which  gives  us  nothing  in  particu- 
lar to  believe,  nothing  as  an  object  of  awe  and  gratitude, 
which  has  no  special  relation  to  human  duty,  is  not  a  religion 
at  all.  It  may  be  formula,  a  generalisation,  a  logical  postulate ; 
but  it  is  not  a  religion.  The  universal  presence  of  the  unknow- 
able (or  rather  of  the  unknown)  substratum  is  not  a  religion. 


342  PHILOSOPHY  OF   COMMON   SENSE 

It  is  a  logical  postulate.  You  may  call  it,  if  you  please,  the 
first  axiom  of  science,  a  law  of  the  human  mind,  or  perhaps 
better  the  universal  postulate  of  philosophy.  But  try  it  by 
every  test  which  indicates  religion  and  you  will  find  it  wanting. 

The  points  which  the  Unknowable  has  in  common  with  the 
object  of  any  religion  are  very  slight  and  superficial.  As  the 
universal  substratum  it  has  some  analogy  with  other  super- 
human objects  of  worship.  But  Force,  Gravitation,  Atom, 
Undulation,  Vibration,  and  other  abstract  notions  have  much 
the  same  kind  of  analogy,  but  nobody  ever  dreamed  of  a 
religion  of  gravitation,  or  the  worship  of  molecules.  The 
Unknowable  has  managed  to  get  itself  spelt  with  a  capital 
U;  but  Carlyle  taught  us  to  spell  the  Everlasting  No  with 
capitals  also.  The  Unknowable  is  no  doubt  mysterious, 
and  Godhead  is  mysterious.  It  certainly  appeals  to  the 
sense  of  wonder,  and  the  Trinity  appeals  to  the  sense  of  won- 
der. It  suggests  vague  and  infinite  extension,  as  does  the 
idea  of  deity  :  but  then  Time  and  Space  equally  suggest  vague 
and  infinite  extension.  Yet  no  one  but  a  delirious  Kantist 
ever  professed  that  Time  and  Space  were  his  religion.  These 
seem  all  the  qualities  which  the  Unknowable  has  in  common 
with  objects  of  worship  —  ubiquity,  mystery,  and  immensity. 
But  these  qualities  it  shares  with  some  other  postulates  of 
thought. 

But  try  it  by  all  the  other  recognised  tests  of  religion. 
Religion  is  not  made  up  of  wonder,  or  of  a  vague  sense  of 
immensity,  unsatisfied  yearning  after  infinity.  Theology, 
seeking  a  refuge  in  the  unintelligible,  has  no  doubt  accus- 
tomed this  generation  to  imagine  that  a  yearning  after  infinity 
is  the  sum  and  substance  of  religion.  But  that  is  a  metaphysi- 
cal disease  of  the  age.  And  there  is  no  reason  that  philoso- 
phers should  accept  this  hysterical  piece  of  transcendentalism, 
and  assume  that  they  have  found  the  field  of  religion  when 


THE  GHOST  OF   RELIGION  343 

they  have  found  a  field  for  unquenchable  yearning  after  in- 
finity. Wonder  has  its  place  in  religion,  and  so  has  mystery ; 
but  it  is  a  subordinate  place.  The  roots  and  fibres  of  religion 
are  to  be  found  in  love,  awe,  sympathy,  gratitude,  conscious- 
ness of  inferiority  and  of  dependence,  community  of  will, 
acceptance  of  control,  manifestation  of  purpose,  reverence 
for  majesty,  goodness,  creative  energy,  and  life.  Where 
these  things  are  not,  religion  is  not. 

Let  us  take  each  one  of  these  three  elements  of  religion  — 
belief,  worship,  conduct  —  and  try  them  all  in  turn  as  ap- 
plicable to  the  Unknowable.  How  mere  a  phrase  must  any 
religion  be  of  which  neither  belief,  nor  worship,  nor  conduct 
can  be  spoken !  Imagine  a  religion  which  can  have  no  be- 
lievers, because,  ex  hypothesi,  its  adepts  are  forbidden  to  be- 
lieve anything  about  it.  Imagine  a  religion  which  excludes 
the  idea  of  worship  because  its  sole  dogma  is  the  infinity  of 
Nothingness.  Although  the  Unknowable  is  logically  said  to 
be  Something,  yet  the  something  of  which  we  neither  know 
nor  conceive  anything  is  practically  nothing.  Lastly,  imag- 
ine a  religion  which  can  have  no  relation  to  conduct ;  for  ob- 
viously the  Unknowable  can  give  us  no  intelligible  help  to 
conduct,  and  ex  vi  termini  can  have  no  bearing  on  conduct. 
A  religion  which  could  not  make  any  one  any  better,  which 
would  leave  the  human  heart  and  human  society  just  as  it 
found  them,  which  left  no  foothold  for  devotion,  and  none  for 
faith ;  which  could  have  no  creed,  no  doctrines,  no  temples, 
no  priests,  no  teachers,  no  rites,  no  morality,  no  beauty,  no 
hope,  no  consolation ;  which  is  summed  up  in  one  dogma  — 
the  Unknowable  is  everywhere,  and  Evolution  is  its  prophet 
—  this  is  indeed  "to  defecate  religion  to  a  pure  transparency." 

The  growing  weakness  of  religion  has  long  been  that  it  is 
being  thrust  inch  by  inch  off  the  platform  of  knowledge ;  and 
we  watch  with  sympathy  the  desperate  efforts  of  all  religious 


344  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

spirits  to  maintain  the  relations  between  knowledge  and  reli- 
gion. And  now  it  hears  the  invitation  of  Evolution  to  aban- 
don the  domain  of  knowledge,  and  to  migrate  to  the  domain 
of  no-knowledge.  The  true  Rock  of  Ages,  says  the  philoso- 
pher, is  the  Unknowable.  To  the  eye  of  Faith  all  things  are 
henceforth  atcaToXr^-y^La,  as  Cicero  calls  it.  The  paradox 
would  hardly  be  greater  if  we  were  told  that  true  religion  con- 
sisted in  unlimited  Vice. 

What  is  religion  for  ?  Why  do  we  want  it  ?  And  what  do 
we  expect  it  to  do  for  us  ?  If  it  can  give  us  no  sure  ground  for 
our  minds  to  rest  on,  nothing  to  purify  the  heart,  to  exalt  the 
sense  of  sympathy,  to  deepen  our  sense  of  beauty,  to  strengthen 
our  resolves,  to  chasten  us  into  resignation,  and  to  kindle  a 
spirit  of  self-sacrifice  • —  what  is  the  good  of  it  ?  The  Un- 
knowable, ex  hypothesi,  can  do  none  of  these  things.  The 
object  of  all  religion,  in  any  known  variety  of  religion,  has 
invariably  had  some  quasi-human  and  sympathetic  relation 
to  man  and  human  life.  It  follows  from  the  very  meaning 
of  religion  that  it  could  not  effect  any  of  its  work  without 
such  quality  or  relation.  It  would  be  hardly  sane  to  make  a 
religion  out  of  the  Equator  or  the  Binomial  theorem.  Whether 
it  was  the  religion  of  the  lowest  savage,  of  the  Polytheist,  or  of 
the  Hegelian  Theist ;  whether  the  object  of  the  worship  were 
a  river,  the  Moon,  the  Sky,  Apollo,  Thor,  God,  or  First  Cause, 
there  has  always  been  some  chain  of  sympathy  —  influence 
on  the  one  side,  and  veneration  on  the  other. 

However  rudimentary,  there  must  be  a  belief  in  some  Power 
influencing  the  believer,  whose  influence  he  repays  with  awe 
and  gratitude  and  a  desire  to  conform  his  life  thereto.  But 
to  make  a  religion  out  of  the  Unknowable  is  far  more  extrava- 
gant than  to  make  it  out  of  the  Equator.  W^e  know  some- 
thing of  the  Equator;  it  influences  seamen,  equatorial  peo- 
ples, and  geographers  not  a  little,  and  we  all  hesitate,  as 


THE  GHOST  OF   RELIGION  345 

was  once  said,  to  speak  disrespectfully  of  the  Equator.  But 
would  it  be  blasphemy  to  speak  disrespectfully  of  the  Un- 
knowable ?  Our  minds  are  a  blank  about  it.  As  to  acknow- 
ledging the  Unknowable,  or  trusting  in  it,  or  feeling  its  influ- 
ence over  us,  or  paying  gratitude  to  it,  or  conforming  our  lives 
to  it,  or  looking  to  it  for  help  —  the  use  of  such  words  about  it 
is  unmeaning.  We  can  wonder  at  it,  as  the  child  wonders  at 
the  "twinkling  star,"  and  that  is  all.  It  is  a  religion  only  to 
stare  at. 

Religion  is  not  a  thing  of  star-gazing  and  staring,  but  of 
life  and  action.  And  the  condition  of  any  such  effect  on  our 
lives  and  our  hearts  is  some  sort  of  vital  quality  in  that  which 
is  the  object  of  the  religion.  The  mountain,  sun,  or  sky 
which  untutored  man  worships  is  thought  to  have  some  sort 
of  vital  quality,  some  potency  of  the  kind  possessed  by  organic 
beings.  When  mountain,  sun,  and  sky  cease  to  have  this 
vital  potency,  educated  man  ceases  to  worship  them.  Of 
course  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  divine  spirits  are  assumed  in  a 
pre-eminent  degree  to  have  this  quality,  and  hence  the  tremen- 
dous force  exerted  by  all  religions  of  divine  spirits.  Philoso- 
phy and  the  euthanasia  of  theology  have  certainly  reduced 
this  vital  quality  to  a  minimum  in  our  day,  and  I  suppose 
Dean  Mansel's  Bampton  Lectures  touched  the  low- water 
mark  of  vitality  as  predicated  of  the  Divine  Being.  Of  all 
modern  theologians,  the  Dean  came  the  nearest  to  the  Evolu- 
tion negation.  But  there  is  a  gulf  which  separates  even  his 
all-negative  deity  from  Mr.  Spencer's  impersonal, unconscious, 
unthinking,  and  unthinkable  Energy. 

Knowledge  is  of  course  wholly  within  the  sphere  of  the 
Known.  Our  moral  and  social  science  is,  of  course,  within 
the  sphere  of  knowledge.  Moral  and  social  well-being,  moral 
and  social  education,  progress,  perfection  naturally  rest  on 
moral  and  social  science.     Civilisation  rests  on  moral  and 


346  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

social  progress.  And  happiness  can  only  be  secured  by  both. 
But  if  religion  has  its  sphere  in  the  Unknown  and  Unknow- 
able, it  is  thereby  outside  all  this  field  of  the  Known,  In 
other  words,  Religion  (of  the  Unknowable  type)  is  ex  hy- 
pothesi  outside  the  sphere  of  knowledge,  of  civilisation,  of 
social  discipline,  of  morality,  of  progress,  and  of  happiness. 
It  has  no  part  or  parcel  in  human  life.  It  fills  a  brief  and 
mysterious  chapter  in  a  system  of  philosophy. 

By  their  fruits  you  shall  know  them  —  is  true  of  all  sorts 
of  religion.  And  what  are  the  fruits  of  the  Unknowable 
but  the  Dead  Sea  apples?  Obviously  it  can  teach  us  noth- 
ing, influence  us  in  nothing,  for  the  absolutely  incalculable 
and  unintelligible  can  give  us  neither  ground  for  action  nor 
thought.  Nor  can  it  touch  any  one  of  our  feelings  but  that 
of  wonder,  mystery,  and  sense  of  human  helplessness.  Help- 
less, objectless,  apathetic  wonder  at  an  inscrutable  infinity 
may  be  attractive  to  a  metaphysical  divine ;  but  it  does  not 
sound  like  a  working  force  in  the  world.  Does  the  Evolu- 
tionist commune  with  the  Unknowable  in  the  secret  silence 
of  his  chamber?  Does  he  meditate  on  it,  saying,  in  quietness 
and  confidence  shall  be  your  strength?  One  would  like  to 
see  the  new  Imitatio  Ignoti.  It  was  said  of  old,  Ignotum 
omne  pro  magnifico.  But  the  new  version  is  to  be  Ignotum 
omne  pro  divine. 

One  would  like  to  know  how  much  of  the  Evolutionist's 
day  is  consecrated  to  seeking  the  Unknowable  in  a  devout 
way,  and  what  the  religious  exercises  might  be.  How  does 
the  man  of  science  approach  the  All-Nothingness?  and  the 
microscopist,  and  the  embryologist,  and  the  vivisectionist  ? 
What  do  they  learn  about  it,  what  strength  or  comfort  does  it 
give  them  ?  Nothing  —  nothing :  it  is  an  ever-present  conun- 
drum to  be  everlastingly  given  up,  and  perpetually  to  be  asked 
of  oneself  and  one's  neighbours,  but  without  waiting  for  the 


THE  GHOST  OF   RELIGION  347 

answer.  Tantalus  and  Sisyphus  bore  their  insoluble  tasks, 
and  the  Evolutionist  carries  about  his  riddle  without  an  answer, 
his  unquenchable  thirst  to  know  that  which  he  only  knows 
he  can  never  know.  Quisque  suos  patimur  Manes.  But 
Tantalus  and  Sisyphus  called  it  Hell  and  the  retribution  of  the 
Gods.  The  Evolutionist  calls  it  Religion,  and  one  might 
almost  say  Paradise. 

A  child  comes  up  to  our  Evolutionist  friend,  looks  up  in 
his  wise  and  meditative  face,  and  says,  "Oh !  wise  and  great 
Master,  what  is  religion?"  And  he  tells  that  child,  It  is  the 
presence  of  the  Unknowable.  "But  what,"  asks  the  child, 
"am  I  to  believe  about  it?"  "Believe  that  you  can  never 
know  anything  about  it."  "But  how  I  am  to  learn  to  do 
my  duty?"  "Oh!  for  duty  you  must  turn  to  the  known, 
to  moral  and  social  science."  And  a  mother  wrung  with  agony 
for  the  loss  of  her  child,  or  the  wife  crushed  by  the  death 
of  her  children's  father,  or  the  helpless  and  the  oppressed, 
the  poor  and  the  needy,  men,  women,  and  children,  in  sorrow, 
doubt,  and  want,  longing  for  something  to  comfort  them  and 
to  guide  them,  something  to  believe  in,  to  hope  for,  to  love, 
and  to  worship  —  they  come  to  our  philosopher  and  they  say, 
"Your  men  of  science  have  routed  our  priests,  and  have 
silenced  our  old  teachers.  What  religious  faith  do  you  give 
us  in  its  place?"  And  the  philosopher  replies  (his  full  heart 
bleeding  for  them)  and  he  says,  "Think  on  the  Unknow- 
able." 

And  in  the  hour  of  pain,  danger,  or  death,  can  any  one 
think  of  the  Unknowable,  hope  anything  of  the  Unknowable, 
or  find  any  consolation  therein?  Altars  might  be  built  to 
some  Unknown  God,  conceived  as  a  real  being,  knowing  us, 
though  not  known  by  us  yet.  But  altars  to  the  unknowable 
infinity,  even  metaphorical  altars,  are  impossible,  for  this  un- 
known can  never  be  known,  and  we  have  not  the  smallest 


348  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

reason  to  imagine  that  it  either  knew  us,  or  affects  us,  or  any- 
body, or  anything.  As  the  Unknowable  cannot  bring  men 
together  in  a  common  behef,  or  for  common  purposes,  or  kin- 
dred feeling,  it  can  no  more  unite  men  than  the  precession 
of  the  equinoxes  can  unite  them.  So  there  can  never  be  con- 
gregations of  Unknowable  worshippers,  nor  churches  dedi- 
cated to  the  Holy  Unknowable,  nor  images  nor  symbols  of 
the  Unknowable  mystery.  Yes  !  there  is  one  symbol  of  the 
Infinite  Unknowable,  and  it  is  perhaps  the  most  definite 
and  ultimate  word  that  can  be  said  about  it.  The  precise 
and  yet  inexhaustible  language  of  mathematics  enables  us  to 
express,  in  a  common  algebraic  formula,  the  exact  combination 
of  the  unknown  raised  to  its  highest  power  of  infinity.  That 
formula  is  (.-v"),  and  here  we  have  the  beginning  and  perhaps 
the  end  of  a  symbolism  for  the  religion  of  the  Infinite  Un- 
knowable. Schools,  academies,  temples  of  the  Unknowable, 
there  cannot  be.  But  where  two  or  three  are  gathered  to- 
gether to  worship  the  Unknowable,  there  the  algebraic  for- 
mula may  suflice  to  give  form  to  their  emotions  :  they  may  be 
heard  to  profess  their  unwearying  belief  in  {x'^),  even  if  no 
weak  brother  with  ritualist  tendencies  be  heard  to  cry,  "O 
:v",  love  us,  help  us,  make  us  one  with  thee  !" 

These  things  have  their  serious  side,  and  suggest  the 
real  difficulties  in  the  way  of  the  theory.  The  alternative  is 
this :  Is  religion  a  mode  of  answering  a  question  in  ontology, 
or  is  it  an  institution  for  affecting  human  life  by  acting  on  the 
human  spirit  ?  If  it  be  the  latter,  then  there  can  be  no  religion 
of  the  Unknowable,  and  the  sphere  of  religion  must  be  sought 
elsewhere  in  the  Knowable.  We  may  accept  with  the  ut- 
most confidence  all  that  the  evolution  philosophy  asserts  and 
denies  as  to  the  perpetual  indications  of  an  ultimate  energy, 
omnipresent  and  unlimited,  and,  so  far  as  we  can  see, 
of  inscrutable   mysteriousness.     That  remains  an  ultimate 


THE  GHOST  OF  RELIGION  349 

scientific  idea,  one  no  doubt  of  profound  importance.  But 
why  should  this  idea  be  dignified  with  the  name  of  rehgion, 
when  it  has  not  one  of  the  elements  of  religion,  except  infinity 
and  mystery?  The  hallowed  name  of  religion  has  meant, 
in  a  thousand  languages,  man's  deepest  convictions,  his  surest 
hopes,  the  most  sacred  yearnings  of  his  heart,  that  which  can 
bind  in  brotherhood  generations  of  men,  comfort  the  father- 
less and  the  widow,  uphold  the  martyr  at  the  stake,  and  the 
hero  in  his  long  battle.  Why  retain  this  magnificent  word, 
rich  with  the  associations  of  all  that  is  great,  pure,  and  lovely 
in  human  nature,  if  it  is  to  be  henceforth  limited  to  an  idea, 
that  can  only  be  expressed  by  the  formula  (x^) ;  and  which 
by  the  hypothesis  can  have  nothing  to  do  with  either  know- 
ledge, belief,  sympathy,  hope,  life,  duty,  or  happiness?  It 
is  not  religion,  this.  It  is  a  logician's  artifice  to  escape  from 
an  awkward  dilemma. 

One  word  in  conclusion  to  those  who  would  see  religion 
a  working  reality,  and  not  a  logical  artifice.  The  startling 
reductio  ad  ahsurdum  of  relegating  religion  to  the  unknowable 
is  only  the  last  step  in  the  process  which  has  gradually  reduced 
religion  to  an  incomprehensible  minimum.  And  this  has  been 
the  work  of  theologians  obstinately  fighting  a  losing  battle, 
and  withdrawing  at  every  defeat  into  a  more  impregnable  and 
narrower  fastness.  They  have  thrown  over  one  after  another 
the  claims  of  religion  and  the  attributes  of  divinity.  They  are 
so  hopeless  of  continuing  the  contest  on  the  open  field  of 
the  known  that  they  more  and  more  seek  to  withdraw  to  the 
cloud-world  of  the  transcendental.  They  are  so  terribly 
afraid  of  an  anthropomorphic  God  that  they  have  sublimated 
him  into  a  metaphorical  expression  —  "defecated  the  idea 
to  a  pure  transparency,"  as  one  of  the  most  eminent  of  them 
puts  it.  Dean  Mansel  is  separated  from  Mr.  Spencer  by  de- 
gree, not  in  kind.     And  now  they  are  pushed  by  Evolution 


350  PHILOSOPHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

into  the  abyss,  and  are  solemnly  assured  that  the  reconcilia- 
tion of  Religion  and  Science  is  effected  by  this  religion  of  the 
Unknowable  —  this  ckimcEra  homhinans  in  vacuo.  Their 
Infinites  and  their  Incomprehensibles,  their  Absolute  and 
their  Unconditioned,  have  brought  them  to  this.  It  is  only 
one  step  from  the  sublime  to  the  unknowable. 

Practically,  so  far  as  it  affects  the  lives  of  men  and  women 
in  the  battle  of  life,  the  Absolute  and  Unconditioned  Godhead 
of  learned  divines  is  very  much  the  same  thing  as  the  Absolute 
Unknowable.     You  may  rout  a  logician  by  a  "pure  trans- 
parency," but  you  cannot  check  vice,  crime,  and  war  by  it, 
nor  train  up  men  and  women  in  holiness  and  truth.     And  the 
set  of  all  modern  theology  is  away  from  the  anthropomorphic 
and  into  the  Absolute.     In  trying  to  save  a  religion  of  the 
spirit-world,  theologians  are  abandoning  all  religion  of  the  real 
world ;    they  are  turning  religion  into  formulas  and  phrases, 
and  are  taking  out  of  it  all  power  over  life,  duty,  and  society. 
I  say,  in  a  word,  unless  religion  is  to  be  anthropomorphic, 
there  can  be  no  working  religion  at  all.     How  strange  is 
this  new  cry,  sprung  up  in  our  own  generation,  that  religion 
is    dishonoured    by    being    anthropomorphic!     Fetichism, 
Polytheism,  Confucianism,  Mediaeval  Christianity,  and  Bible 
Puritanism  have  all  been  intensely  anthropomorphic,  and  all 
owed  their  strength  and  dominion  to  that  fact.     You  can  have 
no  religion  without  kinship,  sympathy,  relation  of  some  hu- 
man kind  between  the  believer,  worshipper,  servant,  and  the 
object   of  his   belief,    veneration,   and   service.     The   Neo- 
Theisms  have  all  the  samie  mortal  weakness  that  the  Un- 
knowable has.     They  offer  no  kinship,  sympathy,  or  relation 
whatever  between  worshipper  and  worshipped.     They  too 
are  logical  formulas  begotten  in  controversy,  dwelling  apart 
from  man  and  the  world.     If  the  formula  of  the  Unknowable 
is  (x")  or  the  Unknown  raised  to  infinity,  theirs  is  {nx),  some 


THE   GHOST   OF   RELIGION  35  I 

unknown  expression  of  Infinity.     Neither  (:v")  nor  (nx)  will 
ever  make  good  men  and  women. 

If  we  leave  the  region  of  formulas  and  go  back  to  the 
practical  effect  of  religion  on  human  conduct,  we  must  be 
driven  to  the  conclusion  that  the  future  of  religion  is  to  be, 
not  only  what  ever}-  real  religion  has  ever  been,  anthropo- 
morphic —  but  frankly  anthropic.  The  attempted  religion 
of  Spiritism  has  lost  one  after  another  every  resource  of  a  real 
religion,  until  risu  solvuntur  tahiilcE,  and  it  ends  in  a  religion 
of  Nothingism.  It  is  the  Nemesis  of  Faith  in  spiritual  ab- 
stractions and  figments.  The  hypothesis  has  burst,  and  leaves 
the  Void.  The  future  will  have  then  to  return  to  the  Know- 
able  and  the  certainly  known,  to  the  religion  of  Realism.  It 
must  give  up  explaining  the  Universe,  and  content  itself  with 
explaining  human  life.  Humanity  is  the  grandest  object  of 
reverence  within  the  region  of  the  real  and  the  known.  Hu- 
manity with  the  World  on  which  it  rests  as  its  base  and 
environment.  Religion,  having  failed  in  the  superhuman 
world,  returns  to  the  human  world.  Here  religion  can  find 
again  all  its  certainty,  all  its  depth  of  human  sympathy,  all 
its  claim  to  command  and  reward  the  purest  self-sacrifice  and 
love.  We  can  take  our  place  again  with  all  the  great  religious 
spirits  who  have  ever  moulded  the  faith  and  life  of  men,  and 
we  find  ourselves  in  harmony  with  the  devout  of  every  faith 
who  are  manfully  battling  with  sin  and  discord.  The  way 
for  us  is  the  clearer  as  we  find  the  religion  of  Spiritism,  in 
its  long  and  restless  evolution  of  thirty  centuries,  ending  in  the 
legitimate  deduction,  the  religion  of  the  Unknowable,  a  para- 
dox as  memorable  as  any  in  the  history  of  the  human  mind. 
The  alternative  is  very  plain.  Shall  we  cling  to  a  religion  of 
Spiritism  when  philosophy  is  whittling  away  spirit  to  Nothing? 
Or  shall  we  accept  a  religion  of  Realism,  where  all  tlie  great 
traditions  and  functions  of  religion  arc  retained  unbroken? 


XXII 
AGNOSTIC   METAPHYSICS 


Many  years  ago  I  warned  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  that  his 
Religion  of  the  Unknowable  was  certain  to  lead  him  into 
strange  company.  "To  invoke  the  Unknowable,"  I  said, 
"is  to  re-open  the  whole  range  of  Metaphysics;  and  the  en- 
tire apparatus  of  Theology  will  follow  through  the  breach." 
I  quoted  Mr.  G.  Lewes'  admirable  remark/  "that  the 
foundations  of  a  Creed  can  rest  only  on  the  Known  and  the 
Knowable."  We  see  the  result.  Mr.  Spencer  developed 
his  Unknowable  into  an  "Infinite  and  Eternal  Energy,  by 
which  all  things  are  created  and  sustained";  though  he 
afterwards  modified  these  highly  theological  words,  "created 
and  sustained." 

He  discovered  it  to  be  the  Ultimate  Cause,  the  All-Being, 
the  Creative  Power,  and  all  the  other  "alternative  impossi- 
bilities of  thought"  which  he  once  cast  in  the  teeth  of  the 
older  theologies.  Naturally  there  is  joy  over  one  philosopher 
that  repenteth.  The  Christian  World  claims  this  as  equiva- 
lent to  the  assertion  that  God  is  the  mind  and  spirit  of  the 
universe;  and  the  Christian  World  says  these  words  might 
have  been  used  by  Butler  or  Paley.^  This  is,  indeed,  very 
true;  but  it  is  strange  to  find  the  philosophy  of  one  who 
makes  it  a  point  of  conscience  not  to  enter  a  church  described 
as  "the  fitting  and  natural  introduction  to  inspiration !" 

'  Problems  of  Life  mid  Mind,  vol.  i.     Preface. 
^  The  Christian  World,  June  5  and  July  3,  1884. 
352 


AGNOSTIC   METAPHYSICS  353 

The  admirers  of  Mr.  Spencer's  genius  —  and  I  count 
myself  amongst  the  earliest  —  will  not  regret  that  he  has  been 
induced  to  lay  aside  his  vast  task  of  philosophic  synthesis,  in 
order  more  fully  to  explain  his  views  about  Religion.  This 
is,  indeed,  for  the  thoughtful,  as  well  as  the  practical,  world 
the  great  question  of  our  age,  and  the  discussion  that  was 
started  by  his  paper  ^  and  by  mine  ^  has  opened  many  topics 
of  general  interest.  IMr.  Spencer  has  been  led  to  give  to 
some  of  his  views  a  certainly  new  development,  and  he  has 
treated  of  matters  which  he  had  not  previously  touched. 
Various  critics  have  joined  the  debate.  Sir  James  Stephen^ 
brought  into  play  his  Nasmyth  hammer  of  Common  Sense, 
and  has  asked  the  bold  and  truly  characteristic  question: 
"Can  we  not  do  just  as  well  without  any  religion  at  all?" 
And  then  Mr.  Wilfrid  Ward,^  "the  rising  hope  of  the  stem 
and  unbending"  Papists,  steps  in  to  remind  us  of  the  ancient 
maxim  —  extra  Ecclesiam  nulla  salus. 

I  cannot  altogether  agree  with  a  friend  who  tells  me  that 
controversy  is  pure  evil.  It  is  not  so  when  it  leads  to  a  closer 
sifting  of  important  doctrines;  when  it  is  inspired  with 
friendly  feeling,  and  has  no  other  object  than  to  arrive  at  the 
truth.  There  were  no  mere  "compliments"  in  my  expres- 
sions of  respect  for  Mr.  Spencer  and  his  work.  I  habitually 
speak  of  him  as  the  only  living  Englishman  who  can  fairly 
lay  claim  to  the  name  of  philosopher;  nay,  he  is,  I  believe, 
the  only  man  in  Europe  now  living  who  has  constructed  a 
real  system  of  philosophy.  Very  much  in  that  philosophy 
I  willingly  adopt ;  as  a  philosophical  theory  I  accept  his  idea 

'  H.  Spencer,  in  Nineteenth  Century,  January  and  July,  1884.     No.  83, 

vol.  XV. 

'  F.  Harrison,  in  Nineteenth  Century,  March  1884.     No.  85,  vol.  xv. 
*Sir  J.  Stephen,  in  Nineteenth  Century,  June  1884. 
*  W.  Ward,  in  National  Review,  June  1884. 
2A 


354  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

of  the  Unknowable.  My  rejection  of  it  as  the  basis  of  Reli- 
gion is  no  new  thing.  The  substance  of  my  essay  on  the 
"Ghost  of  Religion"  I  have  long  ago  taught  at  Newton  Hall. 
The  difference  between  Mr.  Spencer  and  myself  as  to  what 
religion  means  is  vital  and  profound.  So  deep  is  it  that  it 
justifies  me  in  returning  to  these  questions,  and  still  further 
disturbing  his  philosophic  labour.  But  our  long  friendship 
I  trust  will  survive  the  inevitable  dispute. 

It  will  clear  up  much  at  issue  between  us  if  it  be  remem- 
bered that  to  me  this  question  is  one  primarily  of  religion; 
to  Mr.  Spencer,  one  primarily  of  philosophy.  He  is  dealing 
with  transcendental  conceptions,  intelligible  only  to  certain 
trained  metaphysicians :  I  have  been  dealing  with  religion 
as  it  affects  the  lives  of  men  and  women  in  the  world.  Hence, 
if  I  admit  with  him  that  philosophy  points  to  an  unknow- 
able and  inconceivable  Reality  behind  phenomena,  I  insist 
that,  to  ordinary  men  and  women,  an  unknowable  and  incon- 
ceivable Reality  is  practically  an  Unreality.  The  Everlast- 
ing Yes  which  the  Evolutionist  metaphysician  is  conscious  of, 
but  cannot  conceive,  is  in  effect  on  the  public  a  mere  Ever- 
lasting No;  and  a  religion  which  begins  and  ends  with  the 
mystery  of  the  Unknowable  is  not  religion  at  all,  but  a  mere 
logician's  formula.  This  is  how  it  comes  about  that  Mr. 
Spencer  complains  that  I  have  misunderstood  him  or  have  not 
read  his  books,  that  I  fail  to  represent  him,  or  even  misrepre- 
sent him.  I  cannot  admit  that  I  have  either  misunderstood 
him  or  misrepresented  him  on  any  single  point.  I  have 
studied  his  books  part  by  part  and  chapter  by  chapter,  and 
have  examined  the  authorities  on  which  he  relies. 

He  seems  to  think  that  all  hesitation  to  accept  his  views 
will  disappear  if  men  will  only  turn  to  his  First  Principles, 
his  Principles  of  Sociology,  and  his  Descriptive  Sociology, 
where  he  has  "proved"  this  and  "disproved"  that,  and 


AGNOSTIC   METAPHYSICS  355 

arrayed  the  arguments  and  the  evidence  for  every  doctrine 
in  turn.  Now,  for  my  part,  I  have  studied  all  this,  to  my 
great  pleasure  and  profit,  since  the  first  number  of  A  Synthetic 
Philosophy  appeared.  Mr.  Spencer  objects  to  discipleship, 
or  I  would  say  that  I  am  in  very  many  things  one  of  his  dis- 
ciples myself.  But  in  this  matter  of  religion  I  hold  still,  as 
I  have  held  from  the  first,  that  Mr.  Spencer  is  mistaken  as  to 
the  history,  the  nature,  and  the  function  of  religion.  It  is 
quite  true  that  he  and  I  are  at  opposite  poles  in  what  relates 
to  the  work  of  religion  on  man  and  on  life.  In  all  he  has 
written,  he  treats  religion  as  mainly  a  thing  of  the  mind,  and 
concerned  essentially  with  mystery.  I  say  —  and  here  I  am 
on  my  own  ground  —  that  religion  is  mainly  a  thing  of  feel- 
ing and  of  conduct,  and  is  concerned  essentially  with  duty. 
I  agree  that  religion  has  also  an  intellectual  base;  but  here 
I  insist  that  this  intellectual  basis  must  rest  on  something 
that  can  be  known  and  conceived  and  at  least  partly  under- 
stood ;  and  that  it  cannot  be  found  at  all  in  what  is  unknow- 
able, inconceivable,  and  in  no  way  whatever  to  be  under- 
stood. 

Now,  in  maintaining  this,  I  have  with  me  almost  the  whole 
of  the  competent  minds  which  have  dealt  with  this  question. 
Mr.  Spencer  puts  it  rather  as  if  it  were  merely  fanaticism  on 
my  part  which  prevents  me  from  accepting  his  theory  of  Reli- 
gion. Mr.  Spencer  must  remember  that  in  his  Religion  of 
the  Unknowable  he  stands  almost  alone.  He  is,  in  fact,  in- 
sisting to  mankind,  in  a  matter  where  all  men  have  some 
opinion,  on  one  of  the  most  gigantic  paradoxes  in  the  history 
of  thought.  I  know  myself  of  no  single  thinker  in  Europe 
who  has  come  forward  to  support  this  religion  of  an  Unknow- 
able Cause,  which  cannot  be  presented  in  terms  of  conscious- 
ness, to  which  the  words  emotion,  will,  intelligence  cannot 
be  applied  with  any  meaning,  and  yet  which  stands  in  the 


356  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

place  of  a  supposed  anthropomorphic  Creator.  Mr.  George 
H.  Lewes,  who  of  all  modern  philosophers  w^as  the  closest  to 
Mr.  Spencer,  and  of  recent  English  philosophers  the  most 
nearly  his  equal,  wrote  ten  years  ago: — "Deeply  as  we  may 
feel  the  mystery  of  the  universe  and  the  limitations  of  our 
faculties,  the  foundations  of  a  creed  can  only  rest  on  the  Known 
and  the  Knowable."  With  that  I  believe  every  school  of 
thought  but  a  few  dreamy  mystics  have  agreed.  Every 
religious  teacher,  movement,  or  body  has  equally  started  from 
that.  For  myself,  I  feel  that  I  stand  alongside  of  the  religious 
spirits  of  every  time  and  of  every  church  in  claiming  for  reli- 
gion some  intelligible  object  of  reverence,  and  the  field  of 
feeling  and  of  conduct,  as  well  as  that  of  awe.  Every  notice 
of  my  criticism  of  Mr.  Spencer  which  has  fallen  under  my 
eye  adopted  my  view  of  the  hollowness  of  the  Unknowable 
as  a  basis  of  Religion.  So  say  Agnostics,  Materialists,  Scep- 
tics, Christians,  Catholics,  Theists,  and  Positivists.  All 
with  one  consent  disclaim  making  a  Religion  of  the  Unknow- 
able. Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  may  construct  an  Athanasian 
Creed  of  the  "Inscrutable  Existence"  —  which  is  neither 
God  nor  being  —  but  he  stands  as  yet  Athanasius  contra  mun- 
dum.  It  is  not,  therefore,  through  the  hardness  of  my  heart 
and  the  stiffness  of  my  neck  that  I  cannot  follow  him  here. 

Let  us  now  sum  up  the  various  positions  which  Mr. 
Spencer  would  impose  on  us  as  to  Religion.  After  his  two 
articles  and  the  recent  discussion  we  can  hardly  mistake  him, 
and  they  justify  my  saying  that  they  form  a  gigantic  paradox. 
Mr.  Spencer  maintains  that :  — 

I.  The  proper  object  of  Religion  is  a  Something  which 
can  never  be  known,  or  conceived,  or  understood ;  to  which 
we  cannot  apply  the  terms  emotion,  will,  intelligence;  of 
which  we  cannot  affirm  or  deny  that  it  is  either  person,  or 
being,  or  mind,  or  matter,  or  indeed  anything  else. 


AGNOSTIC  METAPHYSICS  357 

2.  All  that  we  can  say  of  it  is,  that  it  is  an  Inscrutable 
Existence  or  an  Unknowable  Cause :  we  can  neither  know 
nor  conceive  what  it  is,  nor  how  it  came  about,  nor  how  it 
operates.  It  is,  notwithstanding,  the  Ultimate  Cause,  the 
All-Being,  the  Creative  Power. 

3.  The  essential  business  of  Religion,  so  understood,  is  to 
keep  alive  the  consciousness  of  a  mystery  that  cannot  be 
fathomed. 

4.  We  are  not  concerned  with  the  question,  "What  effect 
this  religion  will  have  as  a  moral  agent?"  or,  "Whether  it 
will  make  good  men  and  women?"  Religion  has  to  do  with 
mystery,  not  with  morals. 

These  are  the  paradoxes  to  which  my  fanaticism  refuses  to 
assent. 

Now  these  were  the  views  about  Religion  which  I  found  in 
Mr.  Spencer's  first  article,  and  they  certainly  are  repeated 
in  his  second.  He  says: — "The  Power  which  transcends 
phenomena  cannot  be  brought  within  the  forms  of  our  finite 
thought."  "The  Ultimate  Power  is  not  representable  in 
terms  of  human  consciousness."  "The  attributes  of  per- 
sonality cannot  be  conceived  by  us  as  attributes  of  the  Un- 
known Cause  of  things."  "The  nature  of  the  Reality  tran- 
scending appearances  cannot  be  known,  yet  its  existence  is 
necessarily  implied."  "No  conception  of  this  Reality  can  be 
framed  by  us."  "This  Inscrutable  Existence  which  Science, 
in  the  last  resort,  is  compelled  to  recognise  as  unreached  by  its 
deepest  analyses  of  matter,  motion,  thought,  and  feeling." 
"In  ascribing  to  the  Unknowable  Cause  of  things  such  human 
attributes  as  emotion,  will,  intelligence,  we  are  using  words 
which,  when  thus  applied,  have  no  corresponding  ideas." 
There  can  be  no  kind  of  doubt  about  all  this.  I  said  Mr. 
Spencer  proposes,  as  the  object  of  religion,  an  abstraction 
which  we  cannot  conceive,  or  present  in  thought,  or  regard 


358  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

as  having  personality,  or  as  capable  of  feeling,  purpose,  or 
thought  —  in  familiar  words,  I  said  it  was  "a  sort  of  a  some- 
thing, about  which  we  can  know  nothing." 

Mr.  Spencer  complains  that  I  called  this  Something  a  ne- 
gation, an  All-Nothingness,  an  (.r"),  and  an  Everlasting  No. 
He  now  says  that  this  Something  is  the  All-Being.  The 
Unknowable  is  the  Ultimate  Reality  —  the  sole  existence ;  — 
the  entire  Cosmos,  as  we  are  conscious  of  it,  being  a  mere 
show.  In  familiar  words:  —  Everything  is  nought,  and  the 
Unknowable  is  the  only  real  Thing.  I  quite  agree  that  this  is 
Mr.  Spencer's  position  as  a  metaphysician.  It  is  not  at  all 
new  to  me,  for  it  is  worked  out  in  his  First  Principles  most  dis- 
tinctly. Ten  years  ago,  when  I  reviewed  Mr.  Lewes'  Proh- 
lems  of  Life  and  Mind,  I  criticised  Mr.  Spencer's  Trans- 
figured Realism  as  being  too  absolute.  I  then  stated  my 
own  philosophical  position  to  be  that,  "our  scientific  concep- 
tions within  have  a  good  working  correspondence  with  an 
(assumed)  reality  without  —  we  having  no  means  of  knowing 
whether  the  absolute  correspondence  between  them  be  great 
or  small,  or  whether  there  be  any  absolute  correspondence  at 
all."  To  that  I  adhere;  and,  whilst  I  accept  the  doctrine  of 
an  Unknown  substratum,  I  cannot  assent  to  the  doctrine 
that  the  Unknowable  is  the  Absolute  Reality.  But  I  am  quite 
aware  that  he  holds  it,  nor  have  I  ever  said  that  he  did  not. 
On  the  contrary,  I  granted  that  it  might  be  the  first  axiom 
of  science  or  the  universal  postulate  of  philosophy.  But  it 
is  not  a  religion.^ 

I  said  then,  and  I  say  still,  speaking  with  regard  to  religion, 
and  from  the  religious  point  of  view,  that  the  Metaphysician's 

'  My  words  were  that,  "  although  the  Unknowable  is  logically  said  to  be 
Something,  yet  the  something  of  which  we  neither  know  nor  conceive  any- 
thing is  practically  nothing."  That  is,  speaking  from  the  point  of  view  of 
religion. 


AGNOSTIC  METAPHYSICS  359 

Unknowable  is  tantamount  to  a  Nothing.  The  philosopher 
may  choose  to  say  that  there  is  an  Ultimate  Reality  which 
we  cannot  conceive,  or  know,  or  liken  to  anything  we  do 
know.  But  these  subtleties  of  speculation  are  utterly  unin- 
telligible to  the  ordinary  public.  And  to  tell  them  that  they 
are  to  worship  this  Unknowable  is  equivalent  to  telling  them 
to  worship  nothing.  I  quite  agree  that  Mr.  Spencer,  or  any 
metaphysician,  is  entitled  to  assert  that  the  Unknowable  is 
the  sole  Reality.  But  religion  is  not  a  matter  for  Metaphysi- 
cians —  but  for  men,  women,  and  children.  And  to  them  the 
Unknowable  is  Nothing.  Sir  James  Stephen  calls  the  dis- 
tinctions of  Mr.  Spencer  "an  unmeaning  play  of  words." 
I  do  not  say  that  they  are  unmeaning  to  the  philosophers 
working  on  metaphysics.  But  to  the  public,  seeking  for  a 
religion,  the  Reality  or  the  Unreality  of  the  Unknowable  is 
certainly  an  unmeaning  play  of  words. 

Even  supposing  that  Evolution  ever  could  bring  the  people 
to  comprehend  the  subtlety  of  the  All-Being,  of  which  all 
things  we  know  are  only  shows,  the  Unknowable  is  still  in- 
capable of  supplying  the  very  elements  of  Religion.  Mr. 
Spencer  thinks  otherwise.  He  says,  that  although  we  cannot 
know,  or  conceive  it,  or  apply  to  it  any  of  the  terms  of  life,  or 
of  consciousness,  "it  leaves  unchanged  certain  of  the  senti- 
ments comprehended  under  the  name  religion."  "What- 
ever components  of  the  religious  sentiment  disappear,  there 
must  ever  survive  those  which  are  appropriate  to  the  con- 
sciousness of  a  Mystery  ! "  Certain  of  the  religious  sentiments 
are  left  unchanged  !  The  consciousness  of  a  Mystery  is  to 
survive!  Is  that  all?  "I  am  not  concerned,"  says  he,  "to 
show  what  effect  this  religious  sentiment  will  have  as  a  moral 
agent!"  A  religion  without  anything  to  be  known,  with 
nothing  to  teach,  with  no  defined  moral  power,  with  some 
rags  of  religious  sentiment  surviving,  mainly  the  conscious- 


360  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

ness  of  Mystery  —  this  is,  indeed,  the  mockery  of  ReHgion. 
Forced,  as  it  seems,  to  clothe  the  nakedness  of  the  Unknow- 
able with  some  shreds  of  sentiment,  Mr,  Spencer  has  given  it 
a  positive  character,  which  for  every  step  that  it  advances 
towards    Religion    recedes    from    sound    Philosophy.     The 
Unknowable  was  at  first  spoken  of  almost  as  if  it  were  an 
unthinkable  abstraction,  and  so  undoubtedly  it  is.     But  it 
finally  emerges  as  the  Ultimate  Reahty,  the  Ultimate  Cause, 
the  All-Being,  the  Absolute  Power,  the  Unknown  Cause, 
the  Inscrutable  Existence,  the  Infinite  and  Eternal  Enero-v 
from  which  all  things  proceed,  the  Creative  Power,  "the 
Infinite  and  Eternal  Energy,  by  which  all  things  are  created 
and  sustained."     It  is  "to  stand  in  substantially  the  same 
relation  towards  our  general  conception  of  things  as  does 
the    Creative   Power   asserted   by   Theology."     "It   stands 
towards  the  Universe,  and  towards  ourselves,  in  the  same 
relation  as  an  anthropomorphic  Creator  was  supposed  to 
stand,  bears  a  like  relation  with  it,  not  only  to  human  thought 
but  to  human  feeling."     In  other  words,  the  Unknowable 
is  the  Creator ;  subject  to  this,  that  we  cannot  assert  or  deny 
that  he,  she,  or  it,  is  Person,  or  Being,  or  can  feel,  think,  or 
act,  or  do  anything  else  that  we  can  either  know  or  imagine,  or 
is  such  that  we  can  ascribe  to  Him,  Her,  or  It  anything  what- 
ever within  the  realm  of  consciousness. 

Now  the  Unknowable,  so  qualified  and  explained,  offends 
against  all  the  canons  of  criticism,  so  admirably  set  forth 
in  First  Principles,  and  especially  those  of  Dean  Mansel, 
therein  quoted  and  adopted.  The  Unknowable  is  not  un- 
knowable if  we  know  that  "it  creates  and  sustains  all  things," 
One  need  not  repeat  all  the  metaphysical  objections  arrayed 
by  Mr.  Spencer  himself  against  connecting  the  ideas  of  the 
Absolute,  the  Infinite,  First  Cause,  and  Creator  with  that  of 
any  one  Power.     How  can  Absolute  Power  create?    How 


AGNOSTIC   METAPHYSICS  36 1 

can  the  Absolute  be  a  Cause?  The  Absolute  excludes  the 
relative ;  and  Creation  and  Cause  both  imply  relation.  How 
can  the  Infinite  be  a  Cause,  or  create  ?  For  if  there  be  effect 
distinct  from  cause,  or  if  there  be  something  uncreated,  the 
Infinite  would  be  thereby  limited.  What  is  the  meaning  of 
All-Being?  Does  it  include,  or  not,  its  own  manifestation? 
If  the  Cosmos  is  a  mere  show  of  an  Unknown  Cause,  then 
the  Unknown  Cause  is  not  Infinite,  for  it  does  not  include 
the  Cosmos ;  and  not  Absolute,  for  the  Universe  is  its  mani- 
festation, and  all  things  proceed  from  it.  That  is  to  say, 
the  Absolute  is  in  relation  to  the  Universe,  as  Cause  and 
Effect. 

Again,  if  the  "ver}'  notions,  beginning  and  end,  cause  and 
purpose,  relative  notions  belonging  to  human  thought,  are 
probably  irrelevant  to  the  Ultimate  Reality  transcending 
human  thought,"  as  he  truly  tells  us,  how  can  we  speak  of 
the  Ultimate  Cause,  or  indeed  of  Infinite  and  Eternal  ?  The 
philosophical  difficulties  of  imagining  a  First  Cause,  so  ad- 
mirably put  by  Mr.  Spencer  years  ago,  are  not  greater  than 
those  of  imagining  an  Ultimate  Cause.  The  objections  he 
states  to  the  idea  of  Creation  are  not  removed  by  talking  of  a 
Creative  Power  rather  than  a  Creator  God.  If  Mr.  Spencer's 
new  Creative  Power  "stands  towards  our  general  conception 
of  things  in  substantially  the  same  relation  as  the  Creative 
Power  of  Theology,"  it  is  open  to  all  the  metaphysical 
dilemmas  so  admirably  stated  in  First  Principles.  Mr. 
Spencer  cannot  have  it  both  ways.  If  his  Unknowable  be 
the  Creative  Power  and  Ultimate  Cause,  it  simply  renews  all 
the  mystification  of  the  old  theologies.  If  his  Unknowable 
be  unknowable,  then  it  is  idle  to  talk  of  Infinite  and  Eternal 
Energy,  sole  Reality,  All-Being,  and  Creative  Power.  This 
is  the  slip-slop  of  theologians  which  Mr.  Spencer,  as  much 
as  any  man  living,  has  finally  torn  to  shreds. 


362  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

In  what  way  does  the  notion  of  Ultimate  Cause  avoid  the 
difficulties  in  the  way  of  First  Cause,  and  how  is  Creative 
Power  an  idea  more  logical  than  Creator?  And  if,  as  Mr. 
Spencer  says  {First  Principles,  p.  35),  "the  three  different 
suppositions  respecting  the  origin  of  things  turn  out  to  be 
literally  unthinkable,"  what  does  he  mean  by  asserting  that 
a  Creative  Power  is  the  one  great  Reality?  Mr.  Spencer 
seems  to  suggest  that,  though  all  idea  of  First  Cause,  of 
Creator,  of  Absolute  Existence  is  unthinkable,  the  difficulty 
in  the  way  of  predicating  them  of  anything  is  got  over  by 
asserting  that  the  unthinkable  and  the  unknowable  is  the 
ultimate  reality.  He  tells  that,  though  we  cannot  conceive 
the  Unknowable,  we  are  conscious  of  it.  He  said  (First 
Principles,  p.  no),  "every  supposition  respecting  the  genesis 
of  the  Universe  commits  us  to  alternative  impossibilities  of 
thought";  and  again,  "we  are  not  permitted  to  know  — 
nay,  we  are  not  even  permitted  to  conceive  —  that  Reality 
which  is  behind  the  veil  of  Appearance." 

Quite  so !  On  that  ground  we  have  long  rested  firmly, 
accepting  Mr.  Spencer's  teaching.  It  is  to  violate  that  rule 
if  we  now  go  on  to  call  it  Creative  Power,  Ultimate  Cause, 
and  the  rest.  It  comes  then  to  this :  Mr.  Spencer  says  to 
the  theologians,  "I  cannot  allow  you  to  speak  of  a  First 
Cause,  or  a  Creator,  or  an  All-Being,  or  an  Absolute  Exist- 
ence, because  you  mean  something  intelligible  and  conceiv- 
able by  these  terms,  and  I  tell  you  that  they  stand  for  ideas 
that  are  unthinkable  and  inconceivable.  But,"  he  adds,  "I 
have  a  perfect  right  to  talk  of  an  Ultimate  Cause  and  a 
Creative  Power,  and  an  Absolute  Existence,  and  an  All- 
Being,  because  I  mean  nothing  by  these  terms  —  at  least, 
nothing  that  can  be  either  thought  of  or  conceived  of,  and  I 
know  that  I  am  not  talking  of  anything  intelligible  or  con- 
ceivable.    All  the  same  we  are  conscious  of  there  being  some- 


AGNOSTIC   METAPHYSICS  363 

thing.  That  is  the  faith  of  an  Agnostic,  which  except  a  man 
beh'eve  faithfully  he  cannot  be  sound." 

Beyond  the  region  of  the  knowable  and  the  conceivable 
we  have  no  right  to  assume  an  infinite  energy  more  than  an 
infinite  series  of  energies,  or  an  infinite  series  of  infinite 
things  or  nothings.  We  have  no  right  to  assume  one  Ulti- 
mate Cause,  or  any  cause,  more  than  an  infinite  series  of 
Causes,  or  something  which  is  not  Cause  at  all.  We  have 
no  right  to  assume  that  anything  beyond  the  knowable  is 
eternal  or  infinite,  or  anything  else;  we  have  no  right  to 
assume  that  it  is  the  Ultimate  Reality.  There  may  be  an 
endless  circle  of  Realities,  or  there  may  be  no  Reality  at  all. 
Once  leave  the  region  of  the  knowable  and  the  conceivable, 
and  every  positive  assertion  is  unwarranted.  The  forms  of 
our  consciousness  prove  to  us,  says  Mr.  Spencer,  that  what 
lies  behind  the  region  of  consciousness  is  not  merely  unknown 
but  unknowable,  that  it  is  one,  and  that  it  is  Real.  The  laws 
of  mind,  I  reply,  do  not  hold  good  in  the  region  of  the  un- 
thinkable ;  the  forms  of  our  consciousness  cannot  limit  the 
Unknowable.  All  positive  assertions  about  that  "which  can- 
not be  brought  within  the  forms  of  our  finite  thought"  are 
therefore  unphilosophical.  We  have  always  held  this  of  the 
theological  Creation,  and  we  must  hold  it  equally  of  the 
evolutionist  Creation.  Here  is  the  difference  between  Posi- 
tive Philosophy  and  Agnostic  Metaphysics. 

But  if  this  Realism  of  the  Unknowable  offends  against 
sound  philosophy,  the  Worship  of  the  Unknowable  is  abhor- 
rent to  every  instinct  of  genuine  Religion.  There  is  some- 
thing startling  in  Mr.  Spencer's  assertion  that  he  "is  not 
concerned  to  show  what  effect  this  religious  sentiment  will 
have  as  a  moral  agent."  As  in  First  Principles,  so  now,  he 
represents  the  business  of  Religion  to  be  to  keep  alive  the 
consciousness  of  a  Mystery.     The  recognition  of  this  supreme 


364  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

verity  has  been  from  the  first,  he  says,  the  vital  element  of 
Religion.  From  the  beginning  it  has  dimly  discerned  this 
ultimate  verity;  and  that  supreme  and  ultimate  verity  is, 
that  there  is  an  inscrutable  Mystery.  If  this  be  not  retro- 
gressive Religion,  what  is?  Religion  is  not  indeed  to  be 
discarded ;  but,  in  its  final  and  perfect  form,  all  that  it  ever 
has  had  of  reverence,  gratitude,  love,  and  sympathy  is  to  be 
shrivelled  up  into  the  recognition  of  a  Mystery.  Morality, 
duty,  goodness  are  no  longer  to  be  within  its  sphere.  It  will 
neither  touch  the  heart  of  men  nor  mould  the  conduct;  it 
will  perpetually  remind  the  intelligence  that  there  is  a  great 
^Enigma,  which,  it  tells  us,  can  never  be  solved.  Not  only  is 
religion  reduced  to  a  purely  mental  sphere,  but  its  task  in 
that  sphere  is  one  practically  imbecile. 

Mr.  Spencer  complains  that  I  called  his  Unknowable  "an 
ever-present  conundrum  to  be  everlastingly  given  up."  But 
he  uses  words  almost  exactly  the  same ;  he  himself  speaks  of 
"the  Great  ^Enigma  which  he  (man)  knows  cannot  be  solved." 
The  business  of  the  religious  sentiment  is  with  "a  conscious- 
ness of  a  Mystery  that  cannot  be  fathomed."  It  would  be 
difficult  to  find  for  Religion  a  lower  and  more  idle  part  to 
play  in  human  life  than  that  of  continually  presenting  to 
man  a  conundrum,  which  he  is  told  he  must  continually  give 
up.  One  would  take  all  this  to  be  a  bit  from  Alice  in  Wonder- 
land rather  than  the  first  chapter  of  Synthetic  Philosophy. 

I  turn  to  some  of  the  points  on  which  Mr.  Spencer  thinks 
that  I  misunderstand  or  misrepresent  his  meaning.  I  cannot 
admit  any  one  of  these  cases.  In  calling  the  Unknowable  a 
pure  negation,  I  spoke  from  the  standpoint  of  Religion,  not 
of  Metaphysics.  It  may  be  a  logical  postulate,  but  that  of 
which  we  can  know  nothing,  and  of  which  we  can  form  no 
conception,  I  shall  continue  to  call  a  pure  negation,  as  an 
object  of  worship,  even  if  I  am  told  (as  I  now  am)  that  it  is 


AGNOSTIC   METAPHYSICS  365 

that  "by  which  all  things  are  created  and  sustained,"  or 
"that  from  which  all  things  proceed."  Such  is  the  view  of 
Sir  James  Stephen,  and  of  every  other  critic  who  has  joined 
in  this  discussion. 

With  respect  to  Dean  Mansel  I  made  no  mistake ;  the 
mistake  is  ^Ir.  Spencer's  —  not  mine.  I  said  that  of  all 
modern  theologians  the  Dean  came  the  nearest  to  him.  As 
we  all  know,  in  First  Principles  Mr.  Spencer  quotes  and 
adopts  four  pages  from  Hansel's  Ba^npton  Lectures.  But  I 
said  "there  is  a  gulf  which  separates  even  his  all-negative 
deity  from  Mr.  Spencer's  impersonal,  unconscious,  unthink- 
ing, and  unthinkable  Energy."  Mr.  Spencer  says  that  I 
misrepresent  him  and  transpose  his  doctrine  and  Hansel's, 
because  he  regards  the  Absolute  as  positive  and  the  Dean 
regarded  it  as  negative.  If  Hr.  Spencer  will  look  at  my 
words  again,  he  will  see  that  I  was  speaking  of  Hansel's 
Theology,  not  of  his  Ontology.  I  said  '^ deity, ''^  not  the 
Absolute.  Hansel,  as  a  metaphysician,  no  doubt  spoke  of 
the  Absolute  as  negative,  whilst  Hr.  Spencer  speaks  of  it  as 
positive.  But  Hansel's  idea  of  deity  is  personal,  whilst  Mr. 
Spencer's  Energy  is  not  personal.  That  is  strictly  accurate. 
Dean  Hansel's  words  are,  "it  is  our  duty  to  think  of  God  as 
personal";  jSIr.  Spencer's  words  are,  "duty  requires  us 
neither  to  affirm  nor  deny  personality"  of  the  Unknown 
Cause.  That  is  to  say,  the  Dean  called  his  First  Cause 
God ;  Hr.  Spencer  prefers  to  call  it  Energy.  Both  describe 
this  First  Cause  negatively;  but  whilst  the  Dean  calls  it  a 
Person,  Hr.  Spencer  will  not  say  that  it  is  person,  conscious, 
or  thinking.  Hr.  Spencer's  impression  then  that  I  mis- 
represented him  in  this  matter  is  simply  his  own  rather  hasty 
reading  of  my  words. 

It  is  quite  legitimate  in  a  question  of  religion  and  an  object 
of  worship  to  speak  of  this  Unknowable  Energy,  described 


366  PHILOSOPHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

as  Mr.  Spencer  describes  it,  as  impersonal,  unconscious,  un- 
thinking, and  unthinkable.  The  distinction  that,  since  we 
neither  affirm  nor  deny  of  it  personality,  consciousness,  or 
thought,  it  is  not  therefore  impersonal,  is  a  metaphysical 
subtlety.  That  which  cannot  be  presented  in  terms  of 
human  consciousness  is  neither  personal,  conscious,  nor 
thinking,  but  properly  unthinkable.  To  the  ordinary  mind 
it  is  a  logical  formula,  it  is  apart  from  man,  it  is  impersonal 
and  unconscious.  And  to  tell  us  that  this  conundrum  is 
"the  power  which  manifests  itself  in  consciousness,"  that 
man  and  the  world  are  but  its  products  and  manifestations, 
that  it  may  have  (for  aught  we  know)  something  higher  than 
personality  and  something  grander  than  intelligence,  is  to 
talk  theologico-metaphysical  jargon,  but  is  not  to  give  the 
average  man  and  woman  any  positive  idea  at  all,  and  cer- 
tainly not  a  religious  idea.  In  religion,  at  any  rate,  that 
which  can  only  be  described  by  negations  is  negative;  that 
which  cannot  be  presented  in  terms  of  consciousness  is 
unconscious. 

I  shall  say  but  little  about  Mr.  Spencer's  Ghost  theory  as 
the  historical  source  of  all  religion;  because  it  is,  after  all, 
a  subordinate  matter,  and  would  lead  to  a  wide  digression. 
I  am  sorry  that  he  will  not  accept  my  (not  very  serious) 
invitation  to  him  to  modify  the  paradoxes  thereon  to  be  read 
in  his  Principles  of  Sociology.  I  have  always  held  it  to  be 
one  of  the  most  unlucky  of  all  his  sociologic  doctrines,  and 
that  on  psychological  as  well  as  on  historical  grounds.  Mr. 
Spencer  asserts  that  all  forms  of  religious  sentiment  spring 
from  the  primitive  idea  of  a  disembodied  double  of  a  dead 
man.  I  assert  that  this  is  a  rather  complicated  and  de- 
veloped form  of  thought ;  and  that  the  simplest  and  earliest 
form  of  religious  sentiment  is  the  idea  of  the  rudest  savage, 
that  visible  objects  around  him  —  animal,  vegetable,  and 


AGNOSTIC   METAPHYSICS  367 

inorganic  —  have  quasi-human  feelings  and  powers,  which 
he  regards  with  gratitude  and  awe.  Mr.  Spencer  says  that 
man  only  began  to  worship  a  river  or  a  volcano  when  he 
began  to  imagine  them  as  the  abode  of  dead  men's  spirits. 
I  say  that  he  began  to  fear  or  adore  them,  so  soon  as  he 
thought  the  river  or  the  volcano  had  the  feelings  and  the 
powers  of  active  beings;  and  that  was  from  the  dawn  of 
the  human  intelligence.  The  latter  view  is,  I  maintain,  far 
the  simpler  and  more  obvious  explanation ;  and  it  is  a  fault 
in  logic  to  construct  a  complicated  explanation  when  a  simple 
one  answers  the  facts.  Animals  think  inert  things  of  a 
peculiar  form  to  be  animal,  or,  at  least,  to  have  active  proper- 
ties ;  so  do  infants.  The  dog  barks  at  a  shadow ;  the  horse 
dreads  a  steam-engine ;  the  baby  loves  her  doll,  feeds  her, 
nurses  her,  and  buries  her.  The  savage  thinks  the  river,  or 
the  mountain  beside  which  he  lives,  the  most  beneficent, 
awful,  powerful  of  beings.  There  is  the  germ  of  religion. 
To  assure  us  that  the  savage  has  no  feeling  of  awe  and  affec- 
tion for  the  river  and  the  mountain,  until  he  has  evolved  the 
elaborate  idea  of  disembodied  spirits  of  dead  men  dwelling 
invisibly  inside  them,  is  as  idle  as  it  would  be  to  assure  us 
that  the  love  and  the  terror  of  the  dog,  the  horse,  and  the 
baby  are  due  to  their  perceiving  some  disembodied  spirit 
inside  the  shadow,  the  steam-engine,  or  the  doll. 

I  think  it  a  little  hard  that  I  may  not  hold  this  common- 
sense  view  of  the  matter,  along  with  almost  all  who  have 
studied  the  question,  without  being  told  that  it  comes  of 
"persistent  thinking  along  defined  grooves,"  and  that  I 
should  accept  the  Ghost  theory  of  Religion  were  it  not  for 
my  fanatical  discipleship.  Docs  not  Mr.  Spencer  himself 
persistently  think  along  defined  grooves;  and  does  not  every 
systematic  thinker  do  the  same?  And  it  so  happens  that  the 
Ghost   theory   leads   to   conclusions   that   outrage   common 


368  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

sense.  But  it  is  certain  that  the  believers  in  the  Ghost 
theory  as  the  origin  of  all  forms  of  Religion  are  few  and  far 
between.  The  difficulties  in  the  way  of  it  are  enormous. 
Mr.  Spencer  laboriously  tries  to  persuade  us  that  the  wor- 
ship of  the  Sun  and  the  Moon  arose,  not  from  man's  natural 
reverence  for  these  great  and  beautiful  powers  of  Nature, 
but  solely  as  they  were  thought  to  be  the  abodes  of  the  dis- 
embodied spirits  of  dead  ancestors.  Animal-worship,  tree- 
and  plant-worship,  fetichism,  the  Confucian  worship  of 
heaven,  all,  he  would  have  us  believe,  take  their  origin 
entirely  from  the  idea  that  these  objects  contain  the  spirits 
of  the  dead.  If  this  is  not  "persistent  thinking  along  de- 
fined grooves,"  I  know  not  what  it  is. 

The  case  of  China  is  decisive.  There  we  have  a  religion 
of  vast  antiquity  and  extent,  perfectly  clear  and  well  ascer- 
tained. It  rests  entirely  on  worship  of  Heaven,  and  Earth, 
and  objects  of  Nature,  regarded  as  organised  beings,  and  not 
as  the  abode  of  human  spirits.  There  is  in  the  religion  and 
philosophy  of  China  no  notion  of  human  spirits,  disembodied 
and  detached  from  the  dead  person,  conceived  as  living  in 
objects  and  distinct  from  dead  bodies.  The  dead  are  the 
dead;  not  the  spiritual  denizens  of  other  things.  In  the 
face  of  this,  the  vague  language  of  missionaries  and  travellers 
as  to  the  beliefs  of  savages  must  be  treated  with  caution. 

Fetichism,  says  J\Ir.  Spencer,  is  not  found  in  the^  lowest 
races.  Be  that  as  it  may,  it  is  found  wherever  wt  can  trace 
the  germis  of  religion.  I  read  in  the  Descriptive  Sociology 
that  Mr.  Burton,  perhaps  the  most  capable  of  all  African 
travellers,  declares  that  "fetichism  is  still  the  only  faith 
known  in  East  Africa."  In  other  places,  we  read  of  the 
sun  and  moon,  forests,  trees,  stones,  snakes,  and  the  like 
regarded  with  religious  reverence  by  the  savages  of  Central 
Africa.     "The  Damaras  attribute  the  origin  of  the  sheep  to 


AGNOSTIC   METAPHYSICS  369 

a  large  stone."  They  regard  a  big  tree  as  the  origin  of 
Damaras.  "Cattle  of  a  certain  colour  are  venerated  by  the 
Damaras."  "To  the  Bechuanas  rain  appears  as  the  giver 
of  all  good."  "The  negro  whips  or  throws  away  a  worth- 
less fetich."  "The  Hottentots  and  Bushmen  shoot  poisoned 
arrows  at  the  lightning  and  throw  old  shoes  at  it."  Exactly ! 
And  do  these  Damaras,  Bechuanas,  and  Bushmen  do  this 
solely  because  they  think  that  the  sun  and  moon,  the  light- 
ning, the  rain,  the  trees,  the  cattle,  and  the  snakes  are  the 
abodes  of  the  disembodied  spirits  of  their  dead  relatives? 
And  do  they  never  do  this  until  they  have  evolved  a  developed 
Ghost  theory-? 

This  is  more  than  I  can  accept,  for  all  the  robustness  of 
faith  which  Air.  Spencer  attributes  to  me.  Whilst  I  find  in 
a  hundred  books  that  countless  races  of  Africa  and  the 
organised  religion  of  China  attribute  human  qualities  to 
natural  objects,  and  grow  up  to  regard  those  objects  with 
veneration  and  awe,  I  shall  continue  to  think  that  fetichism, 
or  the  reverent  ascription  of  feeling  and  power  to  natural 
objects,  is  a  spontaneous  tendency  of  the  human  mind.  And 
I  shall  refuse,  even  on  Mr.  Spencer's  high  authority,  to 
believe  that  it  is  solely  a  result  of  a  developed  Ghost  theory. 
To  ask  us  to  believe  this  as  "proved"  on  the  strength  of  a 
pile  of  clippings  from  books  of  travel  is,  I  think,  quite  as 
droll  to  ordinary  minds  as  anything  TSfr.  Sprnrer  can  pick 
up  out  of  the  Positivist  Calendar. 

n 

I  pass  now  to  consider  the  fifteen  pages  of  Mr.  Spencer's 
article  in  which  he  attacks  the  writings  of  Auguste  Comte. 
And  I  begin  by  pointing  out  that  this  was  not  at  all  the 
issue  between  us,  so  that  this  attack  savours  of  the  device 

2B 


370  PHILOSOPHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

known  to  lawyers  as  "prejudice,"  or  "abusing  the  plaintiff's 
attorney."  I  gave  reasons  for  thinking  that  the  Unknow- 
able could  never  be  the  foundation  of  a  Creed.  I  added,  in 
some  twenty  lines  at  most,  that  Humanity  could  be.  Through- 
out my  article  I  did  not  refer  to  Comte.  My  argument  was 
entirely  independent  of  any  religious  ordinances  whatever, 
whether  laid  down  by  Comte  or  any  one  else.  Mr.  Mill, 
in  his  work  on  Comte,  has  emphatically  asserted  that  Hu- 
manity is  an  idea  pre-eminently  fitted  to  be  the  object  of 
religion.  And  very  many  powerful  minds  agree  with  Mr. 
Mill  so  far,  though  they  do  not  accept  the  organised  form  of 
that  religion  as  Auguste  Comte  conceived  it.  To  what  de- 
gree, and  in  what  sense,  I  myself  accept  it  is  not  doubtful; 
for  I  have  striven  for  years  past  to  make  it  known  in  my 
public  utterances.  But,  until  I  put  forward  Auguste  Comte 
as  an  infallible  authority,  until  I  preach  or  practise  every- 
thing laid  down  in  the  Positive  Polity,  it  is  hardly  an  answer 
to  me  in  a  philosophical  discussion  to  jest  for  the  fiftieth 
time  about  Comte's  arrogance,  or  about  the  banners  to  be 
used  in  the  solemn  processions,  or  about  addressing  prayers 
to  "holy"  Humanity.  My  friends  and  I  address  no  prayers 
to  Humanity  as  "holy"  or  otherwise;  we  use  no  banners, 
and  we  never  speak  of  Comte  as  Mahometans  speak  of 
Mahomet,  or  as  Buddhists  speak  of  Buddha.  For  my  own 
parf,  T  am  rontinually  saying,  and  I  say  it  deliberately  now, 
that  I  look  upon  very  much  that  Comte  threw  out  for  the 
future  as  tentative  and  purely  Utopian,  Since  I  have  held 
this  language  for  many  years  in  public,  I  do  not  think  that 
Mr.  Spencer  is  justified  in  describing  me  as  a  blind  devotee. 
And  when  he  parries  a  criticism  of  his  own  philosophy,  by 
ridiculing  practices  and  opinions  for  which  I  have  never 
made  myself  responsible,  I  hardly  think  he  is  acting  with 
the  candid  mind  which  befits  the  philosopher  in  all  things. 


AGNOSTIC   METAPHYSICS 


2>7i 


For  this  reason  I  shall  not  trouble  myself  about  the  "eccen- 
tricities" which  he  thinks  he  can  discover  in  the  writings  of 
Comte.  A  thousand  eccentricities  in  Comte  would  not 
make  it  reasonable  in  Spencer  to  worship  the  Unknowable; 
and  it  would  be  hard  indeed  to  match  the  eccentricity  of 
venerating  as  the  sole  Reality  that  of  which  we  only  know 
that  we  can  know  nothing  and  imagine  nothing.  But  there 
are  other  good  reasons  for  declining  to  discuss  with  Air. 
Spencer  the  writings  of  Comte.  The  first  is  that  he  knows 
nothing  whatever  about  them.  To  ]\Ir.  Spencer  the  writings 
of  Comte  are,  if  not  the  Absolute  Unknowable,  at  any  rate 
the  Absolute  Unknown.  I  have  long  endeavoured  to  per- 
suade ]Mr,  Spencer  to  study  Comte,  all  the  more  as  he  owes 
to  him  so  much  indirectly  through  others.  But,  so  far  as  I 
know,  I  have  not  induced  him  to  do  so.  And  his  recent 
criticisms  of  these  writings  show  the  same  thing.  They  add 
nothing,  I  may  say,  to  the  criticism  contained  in  the  work 
of  Mr.  Mill.  To  turn  over  the  pages  of  the  Positive  Polity 
and  find  many  things  which  seem  paradoxical  is  an  exercise 
easy  enough ;  but  to  grasp  the  conceptions  of  Comte,  or  in- 
deed of  any  philosopher,  seriously,  is  labour  of  a  different 
kind. 

Nothing  is  easier  than  to  make  cheap  ridicule  of  any 
philosopher  whatever.  The  philosopher  necessarily  works 
in  a  region  of  high  abstraction,  and  largely  employs  the 
resources  of  deduction.  He  is  bound  by  his  office  to  deal 
freely  with  wide  generalisations;  and  to  follow  his  principles 
across  all  apparent  obstacles.  Every  philosopher  accord- 
ingly falls  from  time  to  time  into  astounding  paradoxes;  he 
is  always  accused  by  the  superficial  of  arrogance;  by  the 
wits  of  absurdity;  by  the  public  of  blindness.  It  is  the 
fate  of  philosophers;  and  the  charges,  it  must  be  allowed, 
are  often  founded  in  reason.     Descartes,  Hobbes,  Leibnitz, 


372  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

Hegel,  may  in  turn  be  attacked  for  certain  hypotheses  of 
theirs  as  the  most  arrogant  of  men  and  the  wildest  of  sophists. 
How  often  has  Mr.  Spencer  shared  the  same  fate !  There 
are  those  who  think  that  no  other  living  man  has  ever  ven- 
tured on  assertions  at  once  so  dogmatic  and  so  paradoxical. 
I  have  too  much  respect  for  Mr.  Spencer  to  quote  any  one 
of  these  wonderful  bits  of  philosophic  daring.  I  recognise  in 
him  a  real  philosopher  of  a  certain  order,  and  I  seek  to 
understand  his  system  as  a  whole;  nor  am  I  dismayed  in 
my  studies  by  a  thousand  things  in  his  theories,  which  cer- 
tainly do  seem  to  me  very  hard  sayings.  Mr.  Spencer  has 
himself  just  published  a  very  remarkable  work,  "The  Man 
versus  the  State";  to  which  he  hardly  expects  to  make  a 
convert  except  here  and  there,  and  about  which  an  un- 
friendly critic  might  say  that  it  might  be  entitled  "Mr. 
Spencer  against  All  England."  I  shall  not  certainly  criticise 
him  for  that.  But  it  is  a  signal  instance  of  the  isolated  posi- 
tion assumed  from  time  to  time  by  philosophers.  Philoso- 
phers, who  live,  not  so  much  in  "glass  houses"  as  in  very 
crystal  palaces  of  their  own  imagination,  of  all  people,  one 
would  think,  should  give  up  the  pastime  of  throwing  stones 
at  their  neighbour's  constructions. 

I  give  an  instance  of  the  way  in  which  Mr.  Spencer  mis- 
understands Comte.  Mr.  Spencer  speaks  of  Comte's  His- 
torical Calendar  as  a  "canonisation,"  as  a  list  of  "saints," 
to  be  "worshipped"  day  by  day,  as  a  means  of  "regulating 
posterity,"  and  as  part  of  the  "deification"  of  Humanity. 
And  he  further  represents  this  list  of  historical  names  as 
a  strictly  classified  selection  of  men  in  degree  of  personal 
merit.  Now  every  part  of  this  view  is  an  error.  So  far  from 
this  calendar  being  permanently  imposed  on  posterity,  Comte 
himself  speaks  of  it  as  provisional,  to  serve  a  temporary  pur- 
pose, and  merely  for  the  nineteenth  century.     And  what  is 


AGNOSTIC   METAPHYSICS  373 

that  purpose?  Why,  to  impress  on  the  mind  the  general 
course  of  human  civilisation.  Comte  calls  it  "a  concrete 
view  of  man's  histor^^"  It  is  not  meant  to  be  a  classification 
in  real  order  of  merit.  It  is  not  essentially  personal  at  all. 
The  names  are  given  and  always  spoken  of  as  "types,"  con- 
crete embodiments  of  manifold  elements  in  the  civilisation  of 
the  past.  Over  and  over  again  Comte  says  that  the  type 
and  its  place  are  often  chosen  without  reference  to  personal 
merit  to  represent  a  class,  a  nation,  or  a  movement. 

They  are  not  called,  or  treated  of,  as  "saints."  There  is 
no  "canonisation,"  no  "worship,"  no  ascription  of  perfec- 
tion, or  absolute  merit  of  any  kind.  The  whole  scheme 
from  beginning  to  end  is,  what  Comte  calls  it,  a  concrete 
view  of  man's  history,  a  mode  of  impressing  on  the  minds 
of  modern  men  what  they  owe  in  so  many  ways  to  men  in 
the  past.  The  exigencies  of  a  calendar,  with  its  months, 
weeks,  and  days,  preclude  any  real  classification  of  merit; 
nor  is  any  such  thing  attempted.  It  is  a  mode  of  teaching 
histor)',  using  the  artifice  of  associating  the  names  of  certain 
famous  men  with  months,  weeks,  and  days.  And  the  object 
is  to  impress  on  the  mind  the  multiplicity  of  the  forces  and 
elements  which  make  up  civilisation.  To  suppose  that  all 
names  which  occupy  similar  places  represent  men  of  exactly 
equal  merit  is  a  gratuitous  piece  of  absurdity  introduced 
into  a  fine  conception.  Even  in  the  Church  Calendar  there 
is  St.  Paul's  Day  and  St.  Swilhin's  Day,  though  no  one  sup- 
poses that  St.  Swithin  is  regarded  as  the  equal  of  St.  Paul. 
But  Comte's  Historical  Calendar  has  no  analogy  with  the 
Catholic  Calendar  at  all.  It  is  a  concrete  view  of  history, 
intended  to  commemorate  the  sum  of  human  civilisation. 

A  single  example  may  show  with  how  little  care  Mr. 
Spencer  has  looked  at  Comte.  He  complains  that  Comte 
should   put    Bichat  above  Newton,  because  he   finds  that 


374  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

Bichat  heads  a  month  in  the  Calendar,  and  Newton  a  week. 
Now,  Comte  never  instituted  any  personal  comparison  be- 
tween Newton  and  Bichat.  But  he  explained  that  for  the 
last  month,  which  represents  the  course  of  modern  science, 
he  must  choose  a  biologist  and  not  a  mathematician,  on  the 
ground  of  the  superior  importance  of  Biology.  The  Calen- 
dar was  constructed  more  than  thirty  years  ago,  when  cer- 
tainly a  thoroughly  adequate  type  of  Biology  was  not  quite 
accessible.  For  grounds  fully  explained,  he  chose  Bichat. 
Newton  takes  his  place  with  the  mathematicians;  but  any 
idea  that  Bichat 's  intellect  was  superior  to  Newton's  has  not 
the  smallest  authority  in  anything  said  by  Comte. 

I  shall  certainly  not  enter  into  any  defence  of  this  Calen- 
dar. It  seems  to  me  the  best  synthetic  scheme  of  history 
which  has  ever  been  constructed  on  a  single  page.  But  I 
am  far  from  supposing  it  perfect,  nor  do  I  doubt  that  it 
might  easily  be  amended  or  revised.  Mr.  Spencer  seems 
astounded  that  Cyrus  and  Godfrey,  Terence  and  Juvenal, 
Froissart  and  Palissy,  should  hold  in  it  the  places  they  do. 
To  discuss  that  question  would  involve  a  long  historical 
argument,  and  I  am  not  at  all  disposed  to  enter  into  any 
historical  argument  with  Mr.  Spencer.  With  all  his  scien- 
tific learning  and  manifold  gifts,  Mr.  Spencer  is  seldom 
regarded  as  having  much  to  tell  us  within  the  historical 
field.  It  is  here  that  his  inferiority  to  Comte  is  most  strik- 
ingly seen.  Those  who  know  the  harmonious  power  with 
which  Comte  has  called  forth  into  life  the  vast  procession 
of  the  ages  can  best  judge  how  weak  by  his  side  Mr.  Spencer 
appears.  In  Mr.  Spencer's  theory  of  history  the  past  teaches 
little  but  a  few  Quaker-like  maxims ;  that  it  is  very  like  a 
savage  to  fight,  and  that  military  activity  and  superstition 
are  the  sources  of  all  evil.  Certainly  Comte,  as  heartily  as 
Spencer,  has  condemned  the  military  spirit  in  this  age,  and 


AGNOSTIC   METAPHYSICS  375 

the  continuance  of  all  fictitious  beliefs.  But  he  is  not  so 
blind  to  facts  that  he  does  not  recognise  the  historical  uses 
of  the  military  life  in  the  past,  and  the  beauty  of  many  theo- 
logical types.  And  thus  it  is  that  he  honours  Godfrey  the 
Crusader,  as  well  as  Socrates  the  philosopher;  the  con- 
querors Cyrus  and  Sesostris,  as  well  as  Pcnn  the  Quaker  and 
St.  Paul  the  Apostle. 

There  is  a  certain  "fallacy  of  the  Den"  running  through 
Mr.  Spencer's  historical  notions,  of  which  his  article  gives 
ver\'  striking  examples.  Possessed  by  his  theory  of  indefi- 
nite "differentiation,"  the  course  of  civilisation  presents  itself 
to  his  mind  as  a  perpetual  development  of  new  forces  —  pro- 
gression in  a  constant  scries  of  divergent  lines.  According 
to  this  view  of  history,  an  institution,  an  idea,  an  energy 
which  the  civilisation  of  to-day  has  abandoned  is  finally 
condemned ;  to  revive  it,  even  under  new  forms,  is  retro- 
gression. Since  savages  respected  their  ancestors,  it  would 
be  savage  to  respect  our  ancestors.  Since  we  have  been 
tending,  during  the  last  two  or  three  centuries,  to  lessen  all 
temporal  and  spiritual  influence  on  the  individual,  we  must 
go  on  till  we  have  reduced  both  to  zero.  Since  war  is  in- 
human, the  qualities  and  habits  which  the  military  life  pro- 
moled  are  equally  abominable.  To  revive  anything  which 
modern  society  has  discarded  is  retrogression.  For  the  test 
with  Mr.  Spencer  is  not  whether  it  is  relatively  good  or  bad 
for  man,  but  is  found  in  the  fact  of  Evolution  absolutely. 

Now  this  error  afi"ects  all  that  Mr.  Spencer  says  about  the 
history  of  civilisation.  The  truth  is,  as  Comte  has  so  won- 
derfully shown,  the  story  of  man's  development  is  a  tale  of 
continual  revival,  reconstruction,  and  fresh  adjustments  of 
social  life.  Old  habits,  thoughts,  and  energies  spring  into 
new  life,  under  altered  forms,  and  in  new  co-ordination. 
Development  means  not  indefinite  differentiation,  but  con- 


3/6  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

tinuous  growth,  with  organic  readjustment  of  the  organism 
to  its  environment.  And  that  organic  readjustment  is  con- 
stantly demanding  the  renewal  of  dormant  elements,  and  the 
new  uses  of  old  things.  I  should  be  sorry  to  think  that 
Humanity  were  for  ever  condemned  to  lose  everything  which 
the  taste  of  this  somewhat  cynical,  material,  and  democratic 
generation  is  pleased  to  throw  off.  The  phrase  Retrogres- 
sive Religion  does  not  frighten  me  at  all.  Any  religion  that 
the  Future  of  Man  is  to  have  will  be  retrogressive  in  this 
sense;  that  it  will  revive  something  of  religious  feelings 
which  were  once  more  active  in  the  world  than  they  happen 
to  be  to-day.  Whether  an  enthusiastic  regard  for  the  wel- 
fare of  our  human  race  be  retrogressive  religion  or  not  I 
care  little.  I  should  have  thought  it  to  be  a  new  and  a 
progressive  type  of  creed,  more  so  than  the  worship  of  the 
Ultimate  Cause,  and  the  Creative  Power,  and  the  All-Being ; 
where  I  find,  indeed  (and  where  the  Christian  World  finds 
also),  retrogression  into  Metaphysic  and  Theology. 

Ill 

I  turn  now  to  the  question  —  if  Humanity  be  an  adequate 
object  of  religion  ?  —  a  question,  as  I  say,  independent  of 
the  forms  in  which  Comte  proposed  to  constitute  it.  Mr. 
Mill,  with  all  his  hostility  to  Positivism,  asserted  emphatically 
that  it  was ;  and  he  went  so  far  as  to  say  that  every  other 
type  of  religion  would  be  the  better,  in  so  far  as  it  approached 
the  religion  of  Humanity.  And  first  let  us  note  that  Mr. 
Spencer  has  given  a  quite  exaggerated  sense  to  what  we 
mean  by  Religion  and  Humanity  by  attaching  to  these  ideas 
theological  associations.  The  same  thing  is  done  by  Sir 
James  Stephen,  and  by  all  our  theological  critics.  Mr. 
Spencer  asks,  What  are  the  claims  of  Humanity  to  "God- 


AGNOSTIC   METAPHYSICS  377 

hood"?  Sir  James  Stephen  talks  of  "the  shadow  of  a 
God,"  and  he  says  he  would  as  soon  "worship"  the  ugliest 
idol  in  India  as  the  human  race.  All  this  is  to  foist  in  theo- 
logical ideas  where  none  are  suggested  by  us.  Humanity  is 
neither  the  shadow  of  God  nor  the  substitute  for  God,  nor 
has  it  any  analogy  with  God.  No  one  claims  any  "god- 
hood"  for  humanity  or  any  perfection  of  any  kind.  \Vc  do 
not  ask  any  one  to  "worship"  it,  as  Hindoos  worship  idols, 
or  as  Christians  worship  God  or  the  Virgin.  If  it  misleads 
people,  I  am  quite  willing  to  spell  humanity  with  a  small 
"h, "  or  not  to  use  the  word  at  all.  I  am  quite  content  to 
speak  of  the  human  race,  if  that  makes  things  clearer;  I 
am  ready  to  give  up  the  word  "worship,"  if  that  is  a  stum- 
bling-block, and  to  speak  of  showing  affection  and  reverence. 
If  people  mean  by  religion  going  down  on  their  knees  and 
invoking  a  supernatural  being,  I  will  wait  till  the  word 
"religion"  has  lost  these  associations. 

The  very  purpose  of  the  Positive  Scheme  is  to  satisfy 
rational  people  that,  though  the  ecstatic  "worship"  of  su- 
pernatural divinities  has  come  to  an  end,  intelligent  love  and 
respect  for  our  human  brotherhood  will  help  us  to  do  our 
duty  in  life.  So  stated,  the  proposition  is  almost  a  truism; 
it  is  undoubtedly  the  practical  conviction  of  millions  of  good 
people,  and,  as  it  seems,  is  that  of  Sir  James  Stephen.  In 
plain  words,  the  Religion  of  Humanity  means  recognising 
your  duty  to  your  fcllowman  on  human  grounds.  This  is 
the  sum  and  substance  of  that  which  it  pleases  some  critics 
and  some  philosophers  to  represent  as  a  grotesque  delusion. 
Whatever  is  grotesque  in  the  idea  is  derived  from  the  ex- 
travagance with  which  they  themselves  distort  that  idea.  I 
have  no  wish  to  "worship"  Humanity  in  any  other  sense 
than  as  a  man  may  worship  his  own  father  and  mother.  A 
good  man  feels  affection  and  reverence  for  his  father  and  his 


378  PHILOSOPHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

mother ;  he  can  cultivate  that  feeling  and  make  it  the  spring 
of  conduct.  And  the  feeling  is  not  destroyed  by  his  finding 
that  his  father  and  mother  had  the  failings  of  men  and 
women.  Something  of  the  affection,  and  more  of  the  sense 
of  brotherhood,  which  a  man  feels  towards  his  own  parents, 
he  feels  towards  his  family;  not  a  little  of  it  even  to  his 
home,  his  city,  or  his  province,  and  much  of  it  towards  his 
country.  Every  good  and  active  man  recognises  the  tie 
that  binds  him  to  a  widening  series  of  groups  of  his  kinsmen 
and  fellowmen.  In  that  feeling  there  are  elements  of  re- 
spect, elements  of  affection,  and  elements  of  devotion,  in 
certain  degrees.  That  sense  of  respect,  affection,  and  devo- 
tion can  be  extended  wider  than  country.  It  can  be  extended, 
I  say,  as  far  as  the  human  race  itself.  And  since  patriotism 
does  not  stop  with  our  actual  contemporaries,  but  extends  to 
the  memories  and  the  future  of  our  countrymen,  so,  I  main- 
tain, our  feeling  for  the  human  race  must  include  what  it 
has  been,  as  well  as  what  it  is  to  be.  That  is  all  that  I  mean 
by  the  religion  of  humanity.  What  is  there  of  "grotesque," 
of  the  ugliest  of  Hindoo  idols,  and  all  the  rest  of  it,  in  so 
commonplace  an  opinion? 

All  good  and  even  all  decent  men  about  us  daily  order 
their  lives  under  a  more  or  less  effective  sense  of  their  social 
duties.  They  live  more  or  less  for  their  wives,  their  chil- 
dren, their  parents,  their  family.  I  do  not  deny  that  they 
live  largely  for  themselves  also;  but  with  good  men  and 
good  women  the  two  strands  of  motive  are  beautifully  bound 
in  one.  And  the  better  the  man,  the  more  close  is  the  har- 
mony between  his  social  and  his  personal  life.  Outside 
their  family,  men  have  other  strong  ties  of  duty  and  of  regard 
for  definite  social  groups.  They  will  do  much  for  their 
friends,  their  party,  their  profession,  their  church,  their 
academy,  their  class,  their  city,  their  country.     It  is  dis- 


AGNOSTIC   METAPHYSICS  379 

graceful  to  proclaim  oneself  indifferent  to  these  claims :  to 
refuse  to  make  any  sacrifice  for  them,  to  deny  that  we  owe 
them  anything,  or  that  we  feel  any  regard  for  them.  There 
is  nothing  very  heroic  about  all  this  in  the  average ;  and  it  is 
always  more  or  less  mixed  up  with  personal  motives.  But 
in  the  main  it  is  good  and  wholesome,  and  bears  noble  wit- 
ness to  the  marvellous  social  nature  of  man.  Now  I  do  not 
say  that  this  in  itself  is  religion.  But  I  mean  by  religion  this 
sense  of  social  duty,  pushed  to  its  full  extent,  strengthened 
by  a  sound  view  of  human  nature,  and  warmed  by  the  glow 
of  imagination  and  sympathy.  It  has  been  said  in  a  vague 
way  that  religion  is  "morality  touched  by  emotion."  The 
religion  of  Humanity,  as  I  conceive  it,  is  simply  morality 
fused  until  social  devotion,  and  enlightened  by  sound  philosophy. 
Yet  men  who  are  known  to  live  under  a  practical  sense  of 
their  social  duties,  men  who  would  be  ashamed  to  profess 
total  unconcern  for  father,  mother,  wife  and  child,  friends 
and  fellow-citizens,  are  not  ashamed  to  exhaust  the  terms  of 
opprobrium  for  the  collective  notion  of  humanity;  which 
after  all  is  only  made  up  of  a  multitude  of  fathers,  mothers, 
wives,  children,  friends,  fellow-citizens,  and  fellowmen.  Mr. 
Spencer's  whole  life  (as  his  friends  know  even  better  than  the 
world)  has  been  one  of  unfaltering  devotion  to  his  great 
mistress  Philosophy,  worthy  to  compare  with  any  in  the 
roll  of  the  "lovers  of  wisdom."  Sir  James  Stephen  is  no 
less  widely  known,  not  only  for  his  indefatigable  public  ser- 
vices, but  for  his  hearty  private  character :  a  devoted  public 
servant,  who,  it  is  said,  sentences  even  the  worst  criminal 
"gently,  as  if  he  loved  him,"  under  a  strong  sense  of  public 
duty.  Yet  these  eminent  men,  whose  entire  lives  are  filled 
with  social,  rather  than  personal,  energy,  have  no  words 
strong  enough  (for  controversial  purposes)  to  express  their 
contempt  for  the  human  race.     Mankind,  says  Mr.  Spencer, 


380  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

is  "a  bubble,"  "a  dull  leaden-hued  thing."  Sir  James 
Stephen  says  it  is  "a  stupid,  ignorant,  half-beast  of  a  crea- 
ture"; and  he  would  as  soon  worship  the  ugliest  Hindoo 
idol,  before  which  the  natives  chop  off  the  heads  of  goats. 
Why,  this  is  the  raving  of  Timon  of  Athens !  These  men 
are  not  cynics,  but  merely  philosophers  attacking  an  oppo- 
nent. To  my  mind  all  this  is  sheer  nonsense.  Men,  known 
to  be  generous  and  self-devoted  in  every  duty  of  social  life, 
are  not  believed  when  they  utter  tirades  of  this  kind  against 
mankind  and  human  nature. 

If  the  human  race  be  "a  half-beast  of  a  creature,"  if  it 
be  this  dismal  "bubble,"  what  else  or  what  better  have  we? 
Why  should  they,  or  any  man,  waste  lives  of  effort  in  its 
service;  what  is  the  worth  of  anything  generous,  humane, 
and  social?  Humanity,  I  say,  is  nothing  but  the  sum  of 
all  the  forces  of  individual  men  and  women ;  and  if  it  be  this 
mere  bubble  and  half -beast,  the  men  and  women  that  make 
it  up,  and  the  human  feelings  and  forces  which  have  created 
it,  must  be  equally  worthy  of  our  loathing  and  contempt. 
In  that  case  our  only  philosophy  is  a  malignant  pessimism, 
exceeding  anything  ever  attempted  in  misanthropy  before. 
I  am  no  optimist;  and  I  certainly  see  no  "godhood"  in  the 
human  race.  I  am  as  much  alive  to  the  vice  and  weakness 
of  the  human  race  as  any  one.  But  I  feel,  in  common  with 
the  great  majority  of  sound-hearted  men,  that  there  is  a 
great  deal  of  human  nature  in  the  human  race,  and  that  of 
good  human  nature;  that  the  good  abundantly  predomi- 
nates, and  that  the  great  story  of  human  progress  is  on  the 
whole  a  worthy  and  an  inspiring  record.  At  any  rate,  this 
planet,  and,  so  far  as  we  know,  this  Universe,  has  nothing 
(in  the  moral  sphere)  which  is  more  worthy  and  more  in- 
spiring of  hope.  Divinities,  and  Absolute  Goodnesses,  and 
Absolute  Powers  have  ended  for  us.     The  relative  goodness 


AGNOSTIC   METAPHYSICS  38 1 

and  power  of  our  race  remains  a  solid  reality.  It  is  bone  of 
our  bone,  and  flesh  of  our  flesh ;  the  stuff  whereof  our  mothers 
and  our  fathers,  our  sons  and  our  friends,  our  fellow-citizens 
are  made :  whereof  are  made  all  who  with  us  and  beside  us 
are  striving  to  live  a  humane  life. 

I  will  not  do  my  friends  the  injustice  of  supposing  that 
any  regard  for  men  which  they  acknowledge  is  confined  to 
their  own  belongings  and  circles,  and  that  for  the  rest  of 
mankind  they  feel  (what  they  assert)  supreme  contempt  and 
dislike.  Their  words  would  suggest  it.  To  Mr.  Spencer 
Europe  presents  nothing  but  the  revolting  prospect  of  "a 
hundred  millions  of  Pagans  masquerading  as  Christians." 
Sir  James  Stephen  says  that  a  majority  of  the  human  race 
cannot  read,  and  devote  their  time  to  nothing  but  daily 
labour.  Axe  they  mere  beasts  for  that?  Some  of  the 
greatest  and  best  of  men  could  not  read ;  some  of  the  noblest 
natures  on  earth  are  spent  in  the  hovel  and  the  garret  of  the 
poor.  It  is  the  task  of  the  religion  of  Humanity  to  correct 
such  anti-social  thoughts,  the  besetting  sin  of  the  philosopher 
and  the  man  of  power.  It  will  teach  their  pride  that  the 
nobility  of  human  nature  is  to  be  found  chiefly  in  the  cottage 
and  the  workshop;  where  the  untaught  mother  is  lavishing 
on  her  children  unutterable  wealth  of  tenderness;  where 
the  patient  toiler  is  subduing  the  earth  that  for  the  common 
good  wise  men  may  have  an  earth  whereon  to  think  out  the 
truth,  and  the  poet  and  the  artist  may  have  materials  to 
satisfy  us  all  with  beauty. 

Comte,  of  all  men,  did  not  choose  out  five  hundred  names 
to  be  "worshipped"  as  "saints,"  devoting  the  five  hundred 
millions  to  oblivion.  He  taught  us  to  see  the  greatness  of 
human  nature  in  the  love  and  courage  of  the  ignorant,  as 
well  as  in  the  genius  and  the  might  of  the  hero.  And  when 
we  think  of  Humanity  our  minds  are  not  set  on  a  band  of 


382  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

the  "elect,"  but  on  the  millions  who  people  this  earth  and 
subdue  it,  leaving  each  century  on  the  whole  a  richer  inheri- 
tance in  comfort,  in  thought,  in  virtue;  —  millions,  not  in 
the  civilised  world  only,  but  in  the  rude  plains  of  Asia,  and 
of  Africa,  where  the  Hindoo  struggles  to  rear  an  honest 
household  in  his  plot  of  rice-field,  and  the  fellah  yields  to 
the  will  of  Heaven  with  sublime  patience,  whilst  retaining 
uncrushed  his  human  heart.  Assuredly  it  is  no  "godhood'* 
that  we  see  there,  no  pride  of  human  reason,  no  millennium, 
or  transfiguration  of  Man.  But  it  is  human  nature,  sound 
down  to  its  depths;  rich  with  unfathomable  love  wherever 
there  is  a  mother  and  a  child,  and  rich  with  undying  courage 
wherever  there  is  the  father  of  an  honest  and  thriving  house- 
hold. 

But  it  is  not  the  present  generation  which  absorbs  our 
thoughts.  Mankind,  as  we  see  it  to-day,  is  neither  god-like 
nor  very  sublime.  But  the  story  of  human  progress  during 
fifty  centuries,  from  the  "half -beast"  that  it  once  was  in  the 
prehistoric  ages  down  to  the  ideal  civilisation  which  we 
surely  foresee  in  the  far-off  ages  to  come  —  this  is  sublime. 
Or,  if  not  sublime  in  the  way  in  which  the  fairy-tale  of 
Paradise,  or  the  Creation  of  the  Universe,  is  sublime,  it  is 
still  the  most  splendid  tale  of  moral  development  of  which 
we  have  any  certain  record.  I  am  not  at  all  disenchanted 
when  I  am  reminded  of  the  savagery,  the  bestiality,  or  even 
the  cannibalism  of  man's  early  career.  There  were  noble 
savages  even  in  the  Palaeolithic  ages,  and  even  the  earliest 
type  of  man  was  superior  in  something,  I  suppose,  to  con- 
temporary types  of  the  ape.  But  such  as  he  was  I  accept 
him  as  the  ancestor  of  the  human  race,  to  whom  it  owes  its 
first  beginning.  The  glory  of  Humanity  is  not  lost,  in  that 
it  was  once  so  low,  but  lies  in  that,  beginning  so  low,  it  is 
now  so  high. 


AGNOSTIC   METAPHYSICS  383 

It  is  for  this  reason  that  Comte  has  insisted  so  much  on 
the  Past,  and  the  religious  value  of  a  true  conception  of  hu- 
man civilisation.  It  shocks  Mr.  Spencer  to  look  with  any- 
thing but  horror  on  our  fighting  and  savage  forefathers. 
But,  such  as  they  were,  they  made  civilisation  possible. 
And  the  grandeur  of  human  civilisation  as  a  whole  can  only 
be  realised  in  the  mind  when  it  constantly  dwells  on  the 
enormous  record  of  its  progress  from  the  half-bestial  begin- 
nings out  of  which  it  has  slowly  arisen  by  incalculable  efforts 
and  hopes.  Still,  it  is  a  record  of  much  failure,  of  short- 
coming at  the  best.  And  for  this  reason,  Positivism  dwells 
quite  as  much  in  the  Future  as  in  the  Past.  Endless  progress 
towards  a  perfection  never,  perhaps,  to  be  reached,  but  to 
be  ideally  cherished  in  hope,  a  hope  which  every  stroke  of 
science  and  every  line  of  history  confirms  to  us,  and  with 
which  every  generous  instinct  of  our  nature  beats  in  unison 
—  such  is  the  practical  heaven  of  our  faith.  As  there  is  no 
godhood  now  in  humanity,  so  there  is  no  Paradise  in  its 
future.  Past,  Present,  and  Future,  all  alike  dwell  on  this 
earth;  on  the  facts  of  man's  actual  career  in  the  dwelling- 
place  that  he  has  made  for  himself  thereon. 

Mr,  Spencer  is  himself  far  too  much  of  a  philosopher, 
and  too  much  of  a  believer  in  moral  progress,  not  to  have  a 
deep  faith  in  this  very  march  of  civilisation  of  which  Hu- 
manity, as  I  understand  it,  is  at  once  product  and  author. 
He  says  himself:  "Surely  civilised  society,  with  its  complex 
arrangements  and  involved  processes,  its  multitudinous  ma- 
terial products  and  almost  magical  instruments,  its  language, 
science,  literature,  art,  must  be  credited  to  some  agency  or 
other."  The  words  are  not  mine,  but  his.  That  is  to  say, 
the  story  of  human  civilisation  is  a  very  noble  record,  de- 
manding, as  he  admits,  "veneration  and  gratitude"  some- 
where.    And  in  these  words  he  throws  to  the  winds  "the 


384  PHILOSOPHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

bubble,"  and  "the  dull  leaden-hued  thing,"  "the  hundred 
million  Pagans  masquerading,"  "the  stupid,  ignorant,  half- 
beast  of  a  creature,"  as  the  judge  calls  it.  The  human  race 
then  is  not  the  odious  bubble ;  on  the  contrary,  the  splendid 
story  of  human  civilisation  must  fill  us  with  a  sense  of  "vener- 
ation and  gratitude."  But  by  astonishing  perversity,  as  it 
seems  to  me,  by  long  habit  of  "persistent  thinking  along 
defined  grooves,"  Mr.  Spencer  has  nothing  but  contempt  for 
the  human  race,  and  lavishes  his  "veneration  and  gratitude," 
called  out  by  the  sum  of  human  civilisation,  upon  his  Un- 
knowable and  Inconceivable  Postulate.  This  is  to  me  to 
outdo  the  ingratitude  of  the  theologians  who  find  "man  only 
vile,"  and  who  ascribe  every  good  thing  in  man's  evil  nature 
to  an  ineffable  Being.  Since  Mr.  Spencer  agrees  with  me 
that  "veneration  and  gratitude,"  for  all  that  man  has  be- 
come, are  due  somewhere,  I  prefer  to  ascribe  it  to  that  human 
race  which  we  know  and  feel ;  and  which,  so  far  as  we  can 
see,  has  fashioned  its  own  destiny,  in  spite  of  tremendous 
obstacles  in  his  environment ;  rather  than  to  a  logician's 
formula,  about  which  the  logician  himself  tells  us  that  he 
knows  nothing  and  conceives  nothing. 

Mr,  Spencer  has  laboured  to  prove  that  Humanity  (which 
he  himself  has  so  admirably  described  as  a  real  organism) 
is  unconscious.  He  might  have  spared  his  pains.  Neither 
Comte,  nor  any  rational  Positivist,  has  ever  regarded  Hu- 
manity as  conscious.  And,  for  that  reason,  nothing  will 
induce  me  to  address  Humanity  as  a  conscious  being,  or  in 
any  way  whatever  to  treat  it  as  a  Person.  In  that  respect  it 
stands  on  the  same  footing  as  Mr.  Spencer's  Unknowable, 
except  that  I  say  frankly  that  I  have  not  the  least  reason  to 
suppose  Humanity  to  be  conscious;  whilst  he  will  not  say 
that  his  Unknowable  may  not  be  conscious  (as  it  might  be  a 
vibration  or  a  parallelopiped).     And  then  Mr.  Spencer  goes 


AGNOSTIC   METAPHYSICS  385 

on  to  argue  that,  since  Humanity  is  not  conscious,  that  con- 
cludes the  matter;  "for  gratitude  cannot  be  entertained 
towards  something  which  is  unconscious."  And  by  a  really 
curious  inconsistency  he  asserts  that  "veneration  and  grati- 
tude" are  due  towards  the  Unknowable,  which  he  has  just 
told  us  cannot  be  conceived  in  terms  of  consciousness  at  all ! 
So  that  he  will  not  let  me  feel  any  gratitude  to  the  human 
race,  my  own  kindred,  because  it  is  unconscious;  and  he 
asks  me  to  bestow  it  all  on  his  unconscious,  or  non-conscious, 
or  outside-of-all-consciousness  Unknowable. 

Apart  from  this  singular  slip  in  logic,  he  says  much  about 
the  unconsciousness  of  the  human  race  which  amazes  me. 
Why  cannot  a  man  feel  any  gratitude  towards  that  which  is 
unconscious?  He  tells  us  to  examine  our  consciousness. 
Well !  Did  all  the  gratitude  which  he  felt  during  life  to  his 
own  parents,  teachers,  and  benefactors  cease  at  the  instant 
of  their  death?  I  cannot  find  it  in  my  consciousness.  My 
gratitude  to  my  parents  is  the  same,  living  or  dead ;  and,  if 
gratitude  to  one  parent  can  be  expressed  and  answered  in 
words,  whilst  gratitude  to  the  other  lies  but  in  the  silent 
communing  of  the  heart,  I  cannot  find  that  the  one  gratitude 
differs  from  the  other,  save  that  this  last  is  the  deeper,  more 
abiding  feeling.  And,  if  a  man  is  unworthy  of  the  name  of 
man  who  can  feel  no  gratitude  to  a  parent  or  a  benefactor, 
the  moment  they  are  laid  cold  in  death,  why  cannot  a  man 
feel  grateful  to  the  school  where  he  was  trained,  or  the  church 
wherein  he  was  reared,  or  the  countr}'  of  his  forefathers  and 
his  descendants?  And  by  school,  church,  or  country,  I 
mean  the  men  therein  grouped,  some  known,  some  unknown, 
some  by  personal  contact,  some  by  spiritual  influence,  by 
whose  labour  he  has  reaped  and  grown. 

Mr.  Spencer  goes  further  in  the  same  line.  Since  the 
human  race,  he  says,  was  unconscious  whilst  slowly  evolving 

2C 


386  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

its  own  civilisation,  since  the  individual  men  and  v^omen 
were  not  consciously  conferring  any  benefits  on  us,  and 
very  partially  foresaw  the  result  of  their  own  labour,  we  owe 
them  no  gratitude.  They  acted  automatically  or  like  coral- 
polyps  by  instinct,  following  their  own  natures,  satisfying 
their  own  craving,  and  we  owe  them  no  more  gratitude  than 
we  owe  to  hogs  for  fattening,  or  to  sheep  for  growing  woolly 
coats.  Watt,  according  to  this  view%  invented  the  steam- 
engine  to  make  money,  or  occupy  his  mind.  Newton  and 
Leibnitz  toiled  only  for  fame.  If  the  poets  and  artists  created 
beauty,  it  was  because  they  liked  beauty,  and  hoped  for  re- 
ward. I  confess  this  seems  to  me  to  strike  at  the  root  of 
morality  and  all  estimate  whatever  of  human  greatness  and 
merit.  A  philosopher  will  tell  us  next  that  he  owes  no 
gratitude  to  the  father  who  begat  him,  or  the  mother  who 
nursed  him ;  for  both  were  obeying  instincts  which  they 
share  with  the  lowest  animals.  If  heroes,  poets,  and  thinkers 
are  mere  automata,  selfishly  and  blindly  following  instincts, 
like  the  polyps  working  their  tentacles  and  thereby  forming  a 
coral  reef,  morality,  and  most  of  the  moral  qualities  of  man, 
are  things  which  we  cannot  predicate  of  man  at  all. 

Man  is  no  doubt  a  highly  complex  being,  and  his  moral, 
intellectual,  and  physical  natures  are  blended  in  marvellous 
ways.  It  was  never  pretended  by  the  optimist  that  any  man 
has  acted  uniformly  on  the  noblest  motives ;  but  it  has  never 
been  asserted  by  the  pessimist  that  he  acts  invariably  on  the 
vilest.  It  is  a  mark  of  the  meanest  nature  to  refuse  to 
acknowledge  a  benefit,  on  the  ground  that  the  benefactor 
was  not  wholly  absorbed  with  the  wish  to  benefit,  or  entirely 
aware  of  the  extent  of  his  benefit.  For  my  part,  I  refuse  to 
measure  out  my  sense  of  gratitude  to  my  human  benefactors, 
known  or  unknown,  by  so  niggardly  a  rule.  I  trust  that 
Raffaelle  and  Shakespeare  did  enjoy  their  w^ork.     But  I  love 


AGNOSTIC   METAPHYSICS  387 

and  admire  the  genius  in  which  they  revelled.  Humanity  is 
rich  with  gratitude  to  those  who  knew  not  the  value  of  the 
services  they  were  rendering,  just  as  it  is  to  those  whose 
names  and  services  are  covered  in  the  vast  wave  of  time. 
What  becomes  of  Patriotism,  if  it  be  open  to  us  to  suggest 
that  the  men  who  fought  our  battles  or  made  our  country 
wanted  nothing  but  money  or  fame?  What  becomes  of 
family  affection,  if  a  man  can  tell  his  mother  that  bore 
him  that  if  she  reared  children  it  was  only  what  cats  and 
rabbits  do? 

The  religion  of  Humanity,  as  we  understand  it,  is  nothing 
but  the  idealised  sum  of  those  human  feelings  and  duties 
which  all  decent  men  acknowledge  in  detail  and  in  fact.  All 
healthy  morality,  as  well  as  all  sound  philosophy,  show  us  that 
the  sum  total  of  all  this  mass  of  life  is  good,  and  is  tending 
towards  better.  As  Mr.  Spencer  admits,  civilised  society 
as  a  whole  must  command  "admiration  and  gratitude" 
somewhere.  This  being  so,  the  sneers  of  philosophers  and 
cjTiics  may  be  left  out  of  sight.  I  shall  not  follow  Mr.  Spen- 
cer in  the  wails  of  his  Jeremiad  over  the  folly  and  wickedness 
of  his  contemporaries.  Millions,  he  says,  still  go  to  church 
and  chapel,  instead  of  studying  Evolution  and  Differentiation, 
or  praying  to  the  Unknowable  at  home.  At  Eton  and  Har- 
row boys  are  taught  to  make  Latin  verses,  and  not  the  genesis 
of  species.  The  House  of  Commons  will  not  let  Mr.  Brad- 
laugh  take  his  seat;  and  many  still  admire  Lord  Beacons- 
field.  Many  people  were  sorry  when  young  Bonaparte  was 
killed  by  the  Zulus ;  and  they  gave  a  dinner  to  Hobart  Pasha. 
At  a  dirmer  in  France,  the  "army  "  was  given  as  a  toast.  And 
German  students  will  fight  duels.  And  for  these  reasons 
Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  has  a  great  contempt  for  his  species. 
Risum  teneatis,  amici  ?  I  must  treat  this  as  a  mere  outburst 
of  ill-humour.     We  all  know  that  there  is  folly,  vice,  and 


388  PHILOSOPHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

misery  enough  in  the  world  —  and  for  that  reason  all  absolute 
"worship"  of  any  one  or  anything  are  out  of  the  question. 
Strangely  enough,  Mr,  Spencer,  who  finds  this  folly  and  vice 
preclude  him  from  any  respect  for  Humanity,  does  not  see 
that  it  ought  also  to  bar  any  "veneration  and  gratitude" 
to  the  Unknowable ;  to  which  he  ascribes  the  honour  of  pro- 
ducing civilised  society,  in  spite  of  all  its  shortcomings.  For 
my  part  I  am  not  to  be  shaken  in  my  belief  that  the  sum  of 
civilised  society  is  relatively  worthy  of  honour,  by  such  melan- 
choly facts  as  that  Mr.  Bradlaugh  cannot  get  his  seat,  and  that 
German  students  slit  each  others'  noses. 

Mr.  Spencer  raises  a  great  difficulty  over  the  fact  that  there 
are,  and  have  been,  very  evil  people  in  the  world,  who  can- 
not be  included  in  the  Humanity  which  we  are  to  honour. 
And  he  asks  why  they  are  excluded  from  the  notion.  He 
cannot  reconcile  Comte's  definition  of  Humanity  "a5  the 
whole  of  human  beings,  past,  present,  and  future,"  with  the 
statement  that  "the  word  whole  points  out  that  you  must  not 
take  in  all  men."  If  Mr.  Spencer  would  take  some  pains  to 
understand  Comte,  he  would  see  that  the  French  word  is 
" ense7nble^\-  that  is  to  say.  Humanity  includes  the  sum  of 
human  civihsation,  but  does  not  include  every  individual 
man,  who  may  not  have  contributed  at  all  to  this  ensemble 
or  "sum."  No  one  has  worked  out  the  organic  unity  and 
life  of  the  Human  Organism  more  clearly  than  ]\Ir.  Spencer 
himself.  When  we  think  and  speak  of  that  organism,  we 
think  and  speak  of  those  organs  and  elements  which  share 
in  its  organic  life,  and  not  of  the  excrescences,  maladies,  or 
excrement,  so  to  speak,  which  it  has  finally  ehminated. 

Men  have  a  warm  regard  for  their  family,  though  there 
may  be  a  blackguard  in  it,  for  whom  they  have  no  regard  at 
all.  They  feel  loyalty  to  their  profession  or  their  party, 
though  they  know  that  it  counts  not  a  few  black  sheep. 


AGNOSTIC   METAPHYSICS  389 

And  patriotism  is  quite  possible  towards  our  countrymen  past 
and  present,  though  some  of  the  worst  men  in  history  have  been 
amongst  them.  We  are  justly  proud  of  our  English  race; 
but  when  we  speak  of  its  achievements  we  are  not  including 
in  our  honour  King  John,  Guy  Fawkes,  and  Titus  Oates. 
If  the  existence  of  a  minority  of  evil  men  makes  it  impossible 
to  think  of  Humanity  as  a  whole,  or  to  honour  it  as  a  whole, 
the  same  argument  would  make  it  impossible  to  think 
of  country  as  a  whole,  or  to  honour  it  as  a  whole.  And 
this  applies  also  to  what  Mr.  Spencer  calls  "civihsed 
society." 

The  analogies  of  Humanity  are  to  be  found  with  such  minor 
aggregates  of  civilised  society  as  Family,  Church,  State,  Coun- 
try. It  has  no  analogy  at  all  with  God,  or  divinity  in  any 
form.  When  Mr.  Spencer  says  that  we  "deify"  Humanity, 
it  would  be  as  just  to  say  that  he  deifies  Evolution.  He  thinks 
that  Evolution  is  the  key  of  our  mental  and  moral  Synthesis. 
I  think  that  Humanity  is.  But  as  I  do  not  suppose  that  he 
finds  "any  claims  to  godhood"  in  Evolution,  I  beg  him  not 
to  suppose  that  I  find  any  in  Humanity.  If  Family,  Church, 
State,  Country,  are  real  aggregates,  worthy  of  gratitude  and 
respect,  a  fortiori,  Humanity  is  a  real  aggregate,  worthy  of 
respect  and  gratitude.  I  cannot  understand  how  the  smaller 
aggregates  can  inspire  us  with  any  worthy  sentiment  at  all, 
whilst  the  fuller  aggregate  of  the  Family  of  Mankind  inspires 
nothing  but  contempt  and  aversion. 

A  few  words  on  the  original  idea  put  forth  by  Sir  James 
Stephen.  Suppose  that  it  turns  out,  he  says,  there  is  no  pos- 
sible object  of  Religion  left  to  man,  cannot  he  do  very  well 
without  Religion  altogether?  It  is  a  view  that  is  often 
secretly  cherished  by  the  comfortable,  the  strong,  and  the 
selfish;  but  I  am  not  aware  that  it  has  ever  been  calmly 
argued  before  as  a  contribution  to  the  philosophy  of  religion. 


390  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

If  his  meaning  be  that  we  can  do  without  adoration  of  any 
superhuman  power,  without  beheving  anything  to  be  above 
human  science,  or  out  of  the  range  of  human  hfe,  of  course 
I  wholly  agree  with  him.  And  if  he  thinks  that  mankind 
will  get  on  very  well  by  means  of  human  education,  human 
morality,  and  the  sense  of  practical  duty  to  our  fellow-beings 
—  then  he  is  something  of  an  unconscious  Positivist  himself, 
and  no  one  will  ask  him  to  go  on  his  knees  to  an  abstract 
notion,  or  to  go  through  any  imitation  of  Christian  or  other 
theological  practices  which  he  may  regard  as  mummery. 
For  my  part,  I  neither  desire  nor  expect  that  Christian  charity, 
or  Christian  morality  of  any  kind,  will  be  preserved.  It 
will  be  enlarged  and  solidified  into  human  charity  and 
human  morality.  And  adopting  all  that  Sir  James  has  said 
thereon,  I  claim  him  as  speaking  on  my  side  —  as  he  certainly 
repudiates  Mr.  Spencer. 

But  this  human  chanty  and  human  morality  will  never  be 
established  if  the  peculiar  cynicism  which  Sir  James  affects 
about  the  human  race  were  ever  to  prevail.  He  says  most 
truly  that  "love,  friendship,  good-nature,  kindness,  carried 
to  the  height  of  sincere  and  devoted  affection,  will  always  be 
the  chief  pleasures  of  life,  whether  Christianity  be  true  or 
false."  Comte  himself  never  put  it  higher,  and  I  am  think- 
ing of  quoting  this  sentence  as  the  text  of  my  next  discourse 
at  Newton  Hall.  But  this  will  not  be  so  —  love,  friendship, 
kindness,  and  devoted  affection  will  not  always  be  the  chief 
pleasures  of  life  —  if  philosophers  succeed  in  persuading  the 
world  that  the  human  race  are  a  set  of  Yahoos.  Sir  James 
also  sees  that,  apart  from  any  theology  whatever,  the  social 
nature  of  man  will  itself  produce  "a  solid,  vigorous,  useful 
kind  of  moral  standard";  and  he  goes  on  to  show  that  this 
morahty  will  have  a  poetic  side,  will  affect  the  imagination 
and  the  heart  by  becoming  idealised,  and  issuing  in  enthu- 


AGNOSTIC   METAPHYSICS  39 1 

siasm  as  well  as  conviction.  O  upright  Judge !  O  most 
learned  Judge ! 

I  ask  no  more  than  this.  The  Religion  of  Humanity  means 
to  me  this  solid,  vigorous,  useful,  moral  standard,  based  on 
the  belief  that  sincere  and  devoted  affection  is  the  chief  pleas- 
ure of  life,  cultivated  and  idealised  till  it  produces  enthusiasm. 
Only  I  insist  that  it  will  need  the  whole  force  of  education 
through  life,  all  the  resources  which  engender  habits,  stir  the 
imagination,  and  kindle  self-devotion,  in  order  to  keep  this 
spirit  ahve  in  the  masses  of  mankind.  The  cultivated,  the 
thoughtful,  and  the  well-to-do  can  nourish  this  solid  morality 
in  a  cool,  self-contained,  sub-C}Tiical  way.  But  to  soften 
and  purify  the  masses  of  mankind  we  shall  need  all  the  pas- 
sion and  faith  which  are  truly  dignified  by  the  name  of  reli- 
gion —  religious  respect,  religious  sense  of  duty,  religious  be- 
lief in  something  vastly  nobler  and  stronger  than  self.  They 
will  find  this  in  the  mighty  tale  of  human  civilisation.  They 
will  never  find  it  in  the  philosopher's  hypothesis  of  an  Infinite 
Unknowable  substratum,  which  "cannot  be  presented  in 
terms  of  human  consciousness,"  of  which  we  can  know  noth- 
ing and  can  conceive  nothing.  Nor  do  I  think  they  will  ever 
find  it  in  the  common-sense  maxim  that  "this  is  a  very  com- 
fortable world  for  the  prudent,  the  lucky,  and  the  strong." 

To  all  that  many  others  have  said,  as  to  the  same  dithcul- 
ties  and  weaknesses  confronting  the  idea  of  Humanity  as 
meet  that  of  the  Unknowable,  I  could  have  little  trouble  in 
showing,  that  as  we  claim  for  Humanity  nothing  absolute, 
nothing  unreal,  and  nothing  ecstatic,  no  such  difl'iculties  arise. 
It  is  a  strength  and  a  comfort  to  all,  whether  weak,  suffering, 
or  bereaved,  to  feel  that  the  whole  sum  of  human  effort  in  the 
past,  as  in  the  present,  is  steadily  working,  on  the  whole,  to 
lessen  the  sum  of  misery,  to  help  the  fatherless  and  the  widow, 
to  assuage  sickness,  and  to  comfort  the  lonely.     This  is  a  real 


392  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

and  solid  encouragement,  proved  by  all  the  facts  of  progres- 
sive civilisation.  If  it  is  not  the  comfort  offered  by  promises 
of  ecstatic  bliss,  and  supernatural  intervention,  it  has  the 
merit  of  being  true  and  humane ;  not  egoist  and  untrue.  If 
it  is  not  enough,  it  is  at  least  all  that  men  and  women  on  earth 
have.  Resignation  and  peace  will  be  theirs  when  we  have 
taught  them  habitually  to  know  that  it  is  all  —  when  the 
promises  of  the  churches  are  known  to  be  false,  and  the  hopes 
of  the  superstitious  are  felt  to  be  dreams. 


XXIII 
SCIENCE   AND   HUMANITY 

The  following  address,  given  iSlh  May  1879,  was  the  first 
of  a  series  of  discourses  undertaken  hy  the  Positivist  Com- 
mittee in  connection  with  M.  Lafiitte,  the  Director  of  Posi- 
tivism in  Paris.  The  course  of  addresses  was  designed 
to  put  forward  and  illustrate  the  six  chapters  of  the  ^'Goi- 
eral  View  of  Positivism"  which  forms  the  Introduction  to 
Comte's  Positive  Polity,  and  also  to  promote  the  practical 
realisation  of  the  Religion  of  Humanity.  The  present 
discourse  answers  to  the  first  of  the  six  chapters  of  the 
''General  View.'' 


Order  and  Progress     ....  Live  for  others. 

The  Principle Love. 

The  Foundation Order. 

The  End        Progress. 

Such  are  the  words  which  Auguste  Comte  inscribed,  as 
the  symbol  and  summary  of  our  creed,  on  the  first  page  of 
the  work  wherein  he  pictured  in  one  system  the  scheme  of 
life  that  had  been  forming  itself  in  a  long  course  of  human 
history  —  the  Religion  of  Humanity. 

The  whole  of  this  work  of  his,  the  Positive  Polity,  is  but 
the  development  of  the  thought  which  is  embodied  in  these 
words.     What  is  it  that  they  mean  ?     It  is  this. 

The  true  moving  force  of  man's  life,  individual  or  social, 

393 


394  PHILOSOPHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

is  Affection  :  love  of  our  kind,  love  of  right,  zeal  for  the  good. 
Let  us  live  for  others,  for  the  happiness  of  man  is  to  live 
as  a  social  being ;  let  us  live  for  self,  only  so  far  that  we  may 
live  more  truly  for  the  whole,  to  which  we  belong  by  the  very 
nature  of  man. 

Remembering  always  that  this  affection  cannot  be  stable, 
uniform,  or  efficient  unless  it  have  a  foundation.  It  must 
stir  us  not  only  to  the  right  things;  but  to  the  right  things 
through  the  right  means.  And  to  move  us  aright,  it  must 
know,  or  rather  be  guided  by  knowledge.  Feeling,  therefore, 
must  ever  rest  on  truth,  must  be  in  accord  with  facts,  with  all 
the  realities  around  man  and  within  man.  And  so,  the  foun- 
dation of  right  living  is  the  true  Order,  first,  of  the  world  in 
which  we  find  ourselves ;  next,  of  the  society  of  which  we  are 
units;  lastly,  of  the  moral  nature  of  the  human  soul.  And 
that  we  may  conform  to  these  various  kinds  of  order  and  live 
by  them,  and  with  them,  we  must  know  them.  So  knowledge 
is  become  a  necessary  condition  of  duty. 

And  yet  again,  the  aim  and  goal  of  human  life,  individual 
as  much  as  social,  is  improvement;  a  continual  rising  into 
a  higher  state,  a  firmer  morality  to  each  of  us,  a  purer  civiH- 
sation  for  our  race.  To  love  and  desire  the  good :  even  to 
know  how  to  achieve  it,  is  not  enough  :  we  must  labour  for  it, 
having  as  our  motive,  a  sound  Heart;  as  our  guide,  right 
Knowledge.  Thus  the  union  of  Love  for  the  good  with 
Knowledge  of  the  true  Order  issues  finally  in  one  end  — 
Progress:  material,  intellectual,  moral:  increased  mastery 
over  nature,  wider  knowledge,  purer  hearts,  and  loftier 
conduct. 

At  last,  after  centuries  of  divided  efforts,  Feehng,  Thought, 
and  Activity  come  to  work  in  one  harmonious  whole.  And  the 
conception  of  Humanity  rises  up  to  give  each  of  the  three  a 
new  meaning.     At  last  we  see  that  it  is  the  vast  human  whole 


SCIENCE  AND   HUMANITY  395 

which  is  the  true  source  and  end  of  every  social  union.  So  we 
see  that  all  we  really  know  is,  the  world  of  law  translated  into 
the  language  of  the  human  mind,  and  ordered  for  the  sake  of 
human  welfare.  And  lastly,  it  is  the  progress  of  man,  and 
of  man's  earth  for  the  sake  of  man,  that  is  the  noblest  ideal  of 
activity.  Humanity  is  the  embodiment  of  our  highest  love, 
the  measure  of  all  our  knowledge,  the  object  of  our  true 
activity.  It  is  the  source  of  all  we  have :  the  master  of  our 
present  lives :  the  end  of  our  hopes  hereafter.  It  is  at  once 
the  source  and  the  object  of  real  Religion. 


What  Religion  Means 

I  have  used  the  word  Religion  —  a  word  which  brmgs  us 
face  to  face  with  two  opposing  difficulties  and  a  crowd  of 
ambiguities.  It  is  said  by  some,  "What  is  the  need  of  Reli- 
gion, if  you  take  as  your  basis  of  life  the  entire  sum  of  human 
science?  If  Religion  is  true,  it  is  included  in  science;  if  it 
is  not  scientific,  it  will  make  life  unreal."  So  argue,  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously,  all  who  trust  for  the  future  of  civili- 
sation to  bare  knowledge  of  real  things,  who  distrust  Theology 
and  all  forms  of  emotional  creeds. 

On  the  other  side,  the  objection  of  all  who  cling  to  Theol- 
ogy in  any  of  its  many  forms  is  this:  "How  can  there  be  a 
Religion,  if  there  be  no  Divinity  ?  Is  Humanity  a  conception 
that  can  compare  in  sublimity  with  God?  Does  not  the 
Reign  of  Law,  which  vou  take  as  vour  foundation,  destroy  the 
possibility  of  the  Infinite,  of  Omnipotence,  of  Absolute  Good- 
ness ;  nay  more,  of  Will,  of  consciousness  in  a  supreme  Being 
of  any  kind?" 

It  is  most  important  to  clear  up  what  we  mean  by  Religion. 

If  we  thought  that  Religion  were  something  outside  of 


396  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

positive  science,  if  it  were  merely  "morality  touched  with 
emotion,"  if  it  were  simply  a  yearning  of  the  spirit  after  some- 
thing or  some  being  which  we  intuitively  assumed  to  be,  but 
of  whom  we  really  know  nothing  definite,  or  whom  we  de- 
liberately take  to  transcend  all  human  understanding  —  if 
Religion  begins  and  ends  with  the  worship  of  a  sublime  but 
vague  ideal  —  then  we  say  to  the  sceptic,  or  the  atheist,  or 
the  man  of  scientific  materialism,  "By  all  means,  we  will 
have  no  Religion  in  that  sense.  You  are  right.  Come  what 
may,  we  will  not  build  our  house  upon  the  sand  of  elastic 
emotion." 

If,  as  some  caricaturists  would  pretend.  Positivism  was 
designed  simply  to  substitute  for  the  adoration  of  God  the 
adoration  of  transfigured  Man,  and  to  stop  there,  then  it  would 
deserve  all  the  contemptuous  condenmation  of  the  man  of 
science  who  takes  his  stand  on  knowledge  of  physical  laws 
and  rejects  all  Religion  altogether.  Such  a  creed  would 
make  life  unreal;  it  would  be  in  conflict  with  science;  it 
would  open  human  life  again  to  all  the  danger  and  confusion 
of  giving  paramount  place  to  a  principle  which  is  ultimately 
an  emotion  devoid  of  conviction.  For  we  know  that  each 
heart  and  each  imagination  would  unconsciously  transform 
and  recast  that  principle  for  itself.  The  result  would  not  be 
worth  the  effort.  The  new  object  of  adoration  would  be  as 
unreal  as  the  old. 

But  we  mean  something  widely  different  by  Religion. 
Religion,  with  Auguste  Comte,  means  the  perfect  unison  be- 
tween man's  intellectual  convictions  and  his  affective  nature 
—  both  being  devoted  to  a  wisely  ordered  activity.  When 
Intellect,  Feeling,  and  Activity  are  brought  into  a  consensus, 
so  that  man's  whole  powers  are  exerted  harmoniously,  in 
accordance  with  his  true  conditions  and  wants,  then,  and  not 
till  then,  man's  life  becomes  religious.     Thus  there  is  no  con- 


SCIENCE  AND   HUMANITY  397 

trast  between  science  and  Religion.  Religion  is  science 
brought  to  bear  upon  man's  industry  and  effort  at  the  prompt- 
ing of  a  noble  feeling.  Religion  is  not  worship  barely,  be- 
cause it  is  not  any  mere  emotion :  it  is  emotion  inspired  by 
knowledge  to  issue  in  action.  Nor  can  Religion  have  as  its 
object  anything  unknown  or  unknowable,  or  vague,  or  ideal 
only.  For  it  implies  the  application  of  the  whole  of  human 
knowledge  to  a  definite  purpose,  under  the  fusing  warmth 
of  love. 

The  puzzle  laid  before  man  is  this.  The  Intellect  is  ever 
at  work  discovering  the  hidden  Laws  and  relations  of  Things. 
Man's  noblest  instincts  are  ever  urging  him  to  devote  himself 
to  the  good ;  his  lower  instincts  are  constantly  urging  him  to 
devote  his  energy  to  self.  His  energy  is  ever  seeking  work  for 
its  hands  —  work  —  product  of  some  kind.  How  these  three 
are  to  work  together  is  the  problem  before  man.  The  Intel- 
lect may  serve  bad  instincts  as  well  as  good.  The  good  in- 
stincts do  not  of  themselves  know  how  to  find  the  truth. 
By  themselves  they  are  less  vigorous  than  the  selfish  instincts. 
The  energy  is  often  wasted  in  vain  efforts,  and  often  is  actively 
bad  and  destructive.  Well !  Religion,  we  say,  is  the  con- 
cordat, or  scheme  of  mutual  alliance  whereby  each  of  the 
three  are  brought  to  co-operate  and  do  their  best  by  the  others, 
under  the  earthly  limitations  of  man's  being. 

Can  any  man  say  that,  in  this  sense,  Religion  is  superfluous, 
or  contrary  to  science,  or  a  source  of  unreality  ?  All  serious 
men,  whatever  their  creed,  of  whatever  school,  are  aiming  at 
this.  All  scientific  labour  whatever  is  directed  (so  far  as  it 
is  not  vain  display  or  dilettante  trifling)  to  give  the  greatest 
extension  and  unity  to  science,  to  bring  it  to  bear  most  effi- 
ciently on  human  thought  and  life.  Politicians,  thinkers, 
moralists,  practical  reformers,  and  abstract  theorists  —  all 
are  occupied  in  bringing  man's  powers  into  truer  relations 


398  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

with  each  other.  At  least  they  profess  to  be  engaged  in  this. 
No  man  but  the  robber  or  the  satirist  is  professedly  occupied 
in  making  human  life  discordant. 

It  is  the  fashion  to  say,  "No  doubt  human  thought  and 
activity  must  be  got  to  harmonise ;  but  this  will  come  about 
of  itself.  Let  us  have  no  system,  no  general  plan,  no  direct 
effort  after  unity.  All  will  go  well  in  the  world  if  everything 
is  let  alone.  The  only  Gospel  is  the  Gospel  of  Absolute 
Laissez  Faire;  there  is  a  plenary  inspiration  and  an  all- 
sufhcing  revelation  in  Laissez  Alter,  Individual  energy  will 
at  last  shake  down  into  working  agreement." 

This  is  a  wide  question ;  and  it  cannot  be  decided  a  priori, 
without  actual  study  of  the  system  propounded.  If  Positiv- 
ism, after  honest  inquiry,  be  found  to  be  really  repressive  of 
the  spontaneous  activity  of  every  individual  unit  of  the  com- 
munity, if  it  repeat  the  social  oppressiveness  of  the  old  socialist 
and  communist  Utopias,  if  the  harmony  it  offers  be  only  a 
paper  constitution,  a  narrow  and  inadequate  miniature  of  a 
vast  design,  then  assuredly  Positivism  deserves  to  be  rejected 
by  every  free  spirit.  It  would  be  a  toy,  a  parody  of  a  great 
thing,  a  nuisance  and  an  obstruction.  But  no  man  has  a 
right  to  say  this  offhand,  without  honest  weighing  of  its  nature 
and  its  aim. 

To  those,  who  think  there  is  something  generous  and  pro- 
found in  the  monotonous  Formula,  "No  system,"  we  say, 
What  is  any  kind  of  education,  what  is  government,  or  phi- 
losophy; what  is  general  science  itself;  what  is  morality; 
what  are  any  of  the  higher  efforts  of  the  human  mind,  whether 
of  creative  genius,  of  force  of  character  —  what  are  these 
but  attempts,  partial  attempts  no  doubt,  to  bring  into  work- 
ing harmony  men's  varied  capacities  and  energies  ?  Civilisa- 
tion is  made  up  of  the  more  or  less  conscious  efforts  of  men  so 
to  order  their  lives  with  a  mutual  understanding  that  they  may 


SCIENCE   AND   HUMANITY  399 

lead  to  the  smallest  amount  of  waste,  and  the  greatest  amount 
of  common  purpose.  It  is  but  the  frenzy  of  insurrection 
which  has  taken  for  its  watchword  —  "let  everything  go  its 
own  way"  —  when  every  rational  effort  of  men  about  us  in 
thought  or  in  action,  be  it  in  the  shape  of  advice  or  of  law, 
springs  from  the  wish  that  things  should  be  got  to  go  the  right 
way  and  not  the  wrong  way.  Well,  Religion,  with  us,  means 
the  state  in  which  the  human  faculties  pull  together,  and  all 
pull  the  right  way. 

I  turn  now  to  the  second  class  of  objectors,  the  Theologians 
of  any  school,  who  mock  at  a  Religion  without  divinities, 
and  ask  us  if  the  universal  Reign  of  Law  which  we  proclaim 
does  not  exclude  the  very  conception  of  Omnipotence  and 
Absolute  Goodness.  I  have  said,  we  mean  by  Positivism 
an  organisation  of  life,  individual  and  social,  and  not  the  bare 
substitution  of  one  object  of  adoration  for  another.  We  do  not 
concern  ourselves  with  the  Absolute,  and  the  Infinite,  or  with 
First  Causes,  or  Eternity,  or  Transccndentals  of  any  kind. 
We  are  not  careful  to  answer  men  in  this  matter  at  all.  Wc 
neither  accept  these  notions  nor  deny  them,  nor  disprove 
them,  nor  denounce  them,  nor  in  any  way  concern  ourselves 
about  them.  Those  who  choose  to  found  man's  life  upon  the 
Infinite  (i.e.  the  Unintelligible),  and  upon  the  Superhuman 
(i.e.  the  visionary,  the  vague,  the  unreal),  these  men  will 
not  trouble  us,  and  we  shall  not  trouble  them.  The  right 
ordering  of  man's  life  is  a  thing  too  serious  and  vast  to  be 
decided  by  any  offhand  appeal  to  rival  sublimities. 

When  Theologians  say,  "Have  you  any  such  sublime 
conception  as  God  to  give  us  ?  —  what  can  you  offer  us  for 
the  eternities,  and  omnipotence,  and  absolute  goodness  that 
you  take  away?"  common  sense  replies  —  Wc  take  away 
nothing.  These  things  are  slipping  away  in  spite  of  you 
and  without  any  act  of  ours.     If  after  eighteen  centuries  of 


400  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

struggle  —  nay,  twenty-eight  or  thirty-eight  centuries  of  con- 
tinually new  adaptations  —  this  eternity,  and  omnipotence, 
and  absolute  goodness,  are  wholly  unable  to  organise  the 
intellectual  and  practical  life  of  man,  if  they  shrink,  generation 
after  generation,  into  a  smaller  field  of  life  and  man's  interests, 
if  they  be  ever  growing  more  distinctly  disparate  with  human 
life,  and  cannot  be  brought  into  line  with  science,  and  industry, 
and  what  is  called  our  worldly  life  at  all ;  if  the  utmost  that 
Theology  can  do  now  is  to  attentuate  itself  to  a  pious  wish, 
to  urge  deprecatingly  and  timidly  that  it  is  not  inconsistent 
with  science,  not  incompatible  with  worldly  energy  and  every 
human  delight  in  life,  then  we  may  say  that  Theology  is  mani- 
festly unable  to  deal  with  the  problem. 

It  is  not  enough  to  be  a  pious  wish,  a  sublime  abstraction. 
It  is  a  miserable  claim  to  be  not  inconsistent  with  science, 
not  incompatible  with  energy  and  culture.  The  question  is. 
Can  Theology  vitalise,  stimulate,  co-ordinate  science?  Can 
it  show  the  relation  of  science  to  human  progress?  Can  it 
on  the  conception  of  Law  build  up  a  religious  attitude  of 
mind  far  better  than  on  the  conception  of  arbitrary  omnipo- 
tence ?  Can  Theology  (with  its  vale  of  tears  and  its  celestial 
crown)  honestly  direct  the  myriad  efforts  of  human  versatility 
to  clothe  human  life  with  everything  useful,  ennobling,  lovely  ? 
If  it  cannot  do  any  of  these  things,  it  is  manifestly  unable  to 
be  the  supreme  law  of  human  life,  for  two  out  of  three  parts 
of  human  nature  are  entirely  beyond  its  reach. 

It  says  (and  it  may  say  truly)  its  Principle  too  is  Love. 
Yes  !  it  is  the  Love  of  God.  But  there  it  stops.  It  does  not 
pretend  to  say  that  its  Foundation  is  Order  (i.e.  positive  know- 
ledge of  real  things),  still  less  can  it  say  its  End  is  Progress  — 
physical,  material,  intellectual,  as  well  as  moral,  progress. 
It  can  only  ejaculate  that  its  foundation  is  a  Divine  Order, 
a  thing  ever  shifting,  vague,  and  purely  hypothetical;    its 


SCIENCE   AND   HUMANITY  4OI 

end  is  a  transcendental  Progress  to  a  supersensuous  crown  of 
glory.  To  positive  science,  to  practical  human  improvement, 
it  has  nothing  whatever  to  say,  except  "set  not  your  thoughts 
and  afifections  on  this  world."  In  doing  this,  Theology  with- 
draws from  human  nature.  It  says  to  the  heart  —  worship, 
love,  obey.  To  the  Intellect,  to  the  Character  it  has  nothing 
to  say  at  all  but  a  pious  hope  that  they  will  both  act  to  the 
honour  and  glory  of  God :  and  both  put  their  own  interpre- 
tation on  that. 

Theology,  therefore,  is  not  Religion.  It  does  not  pretend 
to  concentrate  and  harmonise  human  nature.  It  merelv 
pretends  to  soften,  console,  and  purify  the  heart.  In  the 
early  stages  of  man's  life  it  did  more.  There  were  once  forms 
of  Theology,  which  in  their  day  very  largely  treated  human 
nature  as  a  whole,  and  in  all  its  sides.  When  man  knew  very 
little,  and  led  a  very  simple  life,  the  conception  of  Gods, 
or  God,  and  the  manifold  apparatus  of  Theology,  really 
covered  the  greater  part  of  his  life,  mental,  practical,  and 
emotional. 

He  heard,  borne  on  the  wind,  the  articulate  voice 
Of  God;  and  angels  to  his  sight  appeared 
Crowning  the  glorious  hills  of  Paradise; 
Or  through  the  groves  gliding  like  morning  mist 
Enkindled  by  the  sun.     He  sate  and  talked 
With  winged  messengers,  who  daily  brought 
To  his  small  island  in  the  ethereal  deep 
Tidings  of  joy  and  love. 

Time  was  when,  under  the  wing  of  the  great  Theocracies, 
or  under  Moses  and  the  Prophets,  in  early  Greece,  and  Rome, 
in  Mediaeval  Europe,  or  in  the  glory  of  Islam,  and  amidst  the 
first  Bible  saints,  Theology  was  practically  coextensive  with 
life.  It  really  knit  human  nature  into  a  whole,  explained  it 
to  itself,  and  taught  man  his  relations  to  the  world  around 
2  D 


402  PHILOSOPHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

him.  But  if  sublimity,  and  universality,  and  omnipotence 
are  the  mark  of  what  we  need,  or  the  test  of  truth,  then 
surely  the  God  of  Abraham,  and  of  Isaac,  the  God  of  Moses, 
and  of  David,  the  Pantheon  of  Greece  and  Rome,  the 
Paradise  of  Dante,  of  St.  Bernard,  of  Thomas  a  Kempis, 
shows  us  something  far  more  sublime.  Their  Gods  were 
far  more  almighty  and  onmipresent  than  the  abstract,  nega- 
tive, hyper-ethereal  Deity  of  a  modem  cultured  theologian, 
a  being  who  can  only  be  described  by  negations,  and 
who  is  relegated  far  away  from  science,  politics,  industry, 
culture,  beauty  —  far  away  from  every  human  sphere  but 
that  of  metaphysical  meditation ;  who  is  too  neutral  to  con- 
flict with  science,  too  ethereal  to  be  dragged  into  practical 
fact,  too  subjective  to  have  any  consistent  part  in  controlling 
man's  real  life  and  external  activity. 

No  !  it  is  not  now,  when,  century  after  century.  Theology 
has  been  gradually  withdrawing  from  the  field  of  human 
nature,  until  it  has  reached  almost  the  vanishing  point,  now 
that  its  sole  hope  is  in  its  very  indefiniteness,  and  its  sole 
justification  that  it  does  not  meddle  either  with  thought,  or 
art,  or  practical  activity  or  social  order,  it  is  not  now  that  we 
can  listen  to  its  claim  that  it  is  so  subHme  and  universal; 
touching,  though  it  may  be,  is  yet  its  power  over  the  heart  as 
well  as  the  imagination,  and  exquisite  as  are  often  the  products 
of  its  saintlier  lives.  The  sublimity,  the  purity,  the  saintliness 
of  its  ideal,  and  often  of  its  fruits,  we  see  them  all  —  and  we 
trust  we  may  preserve  them  and  make  them  our  own.  But 
our  present  business  is  far  more  than  simply  to  find  a  sublime 
ideal,  or  even  to  get  a  conception  of  exquisite  pathos,  with 
power  to  humble  and  to  console  the  heart.  Our  business  is 
to  bring  Religion  once  more  to  bear  upon  life  and  humanity, 
by  finding  that  key  of  life  which  will  correlate  at  once  life  and 
humanity  in  all  their  sides,  after  all  the  vast  development 


SCIENCE   AND    HUMANITY  403 

they  have  had  in  modem  ages.  And  this  Theology  cannot  do, 
or  at  least  does  not  do. 

This  same  objection,  it  will  be  seen,  applies  equally  to 
Theology  of  every  kind,  under  every  one  of  its  modem  forms, 
from  that  of  the  sternest  Bible  Puritanism  or  that  of  the  most 
mystical  Catholic  cloister  to  the  flimsiest  cloud-shadow  of 
God  which  engages  the  fancy  of  the  modem  litterateur  or 
metaphysician.  These  rationalised  Trinities,  these  residua 
and  survivals  of  the  bare  old  Deisms,  these  "defecated" 
hypotheses  of  a  possible  divine  abstraction,  these  indescribable 
"eternals  that  make  for  righteousness,"  and  all  the  other 
phrases  by  which  clever  men  try  to  escape  from  the  obvious 
difficulties  they  feel  in  saying  God  when  they  do  not  mean 
God  —  these  are  even  less  Religion  than  are  the  orthodox 
Theologies.  The  Unitarian  formula  which  seeks  to  escape 
from  logical  contradictions  by  discarding  the  Athanasian 
Creed,  the  Neo-Christianity  which  seeks  to  escape  from 
historical  criticism  by  giving  up  the  Bible  as  the  word  of  God 
and  the  scheme  of  Redemption  as  the  basis  of  its  creed,  these 
philosophical  conundrums  which  try  to  save  Theology  by 
veiling  it  in  an  impenetrable  cloud-land  —  these  have  less  to 
say  to  human  nature,  to  thought,  and  energy,  to  modem  science 
and  industrial  life,  even  than  the  Vatican  itself,  or  Calvinism 
pure  and  simple. 

The  Vatican,  it  is  true,  offers  nothing  but  the  Syllabus  for 
its  mode  of  treating  science  and  society.  That  we  think 
is  farcical  enough.  Calvinism  ostentatiously  declares  that 
science  and  society  are  worldly,  and  therefore  ungodly,  and 
withdraws  into  its  chamber  to  commune  with  its  God.  But 
it  still  finds  its  God  commensurate  with  its  own  life,  all 
stunted  and  distorted  as  that  life  is.  Even  these  two  have 
something  to  say  about  life  —  practical  life,  thought,  conduct, 
happiness.     But  the  bare  Deist,  the  Rationalising  Theist, 


404  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

the  Metaphysical  dreamer  about  a  hypothetical  First  Cause, 
such  as  these  are  simply  withdrawing  from  the  field  alto- 
gether. Their  creed  has  nothing  to  say  to  man,  and  man's 
life,  except  what  each  man  may  find  it  in  his  own  head  or  heart 
to  say  —  which  is  a  sort  of  Religion  as  you  hke  it.  They 
fancy  they  are  dexterously  avoiding  the  difficulties,  logical 
or  historical.  But,  in  avoiding  difficulties,  they  are  more 
and  more  surrendering  the  whole  field  of  human  nature,  in- 
tellectual, practical,  aye,  and  moral  too  —  for  their  Religion 
is  refined  down  to  a  metaphysical  puzzle.  This  is  not  Reh- 
gion  at  all.  They  make  Religion,  in  its  flight,  abandon  the 
whole  field  of  human  nature  which  it  is  the  business  of  Religion 
to  transform  and  guide  —  which  it  once  did  transform  and 
guide.  They  abandon  it  to  those  who  have  something  to  say 
about  the  reordering  of  human  nature  as  a  whole. 

II 

The  Problem  of  Life 

Let  us  see  what  the  problem  really  is.  Every  Religion, 
every  complete  philosophy,  and  every  systematic  social  Polity, 
aims  at  making  man's  life  more  harmonious  wuthin,  more 
complete  in  social  union,  and  in  truer  relation  to  the  world 
around  us.  It  is  the  fashion  nowadays  to  say  that  Religion 
explains  the  relation  of  Man  to  the  Infinite,  or  of  Man  to  the 
Universe,  of  man  to  the  mysterious  questions  within  him,  or 
the  immensity  without  him.  But  this  is  merely  a  modem, 
narrow,  and  perfectly  artificial  idea  of  Religion.  The  Reli- 
gion of  Moses,  or  of  St.  Paul,  meant  something  far  more  than 
the  relations  of  these  individuals  to  the  Infinite,  or  their  unex- 
pressed and  inexpressible  yearnings  after  something  myste- 
rious. Religion  then  meant  a  comprehensive  scheme  of  life 
and  thought  which  made  the  man  as  a  whole  feel  at  rest,  in 


SCIENCE  AND   HUMANITY  405 

health,  in  harmonious  unison  within  him;  which  knit  bodies 
of  men  having  the  same  belief  into  a  common  mode  of  thought, 
and  life,  and  activity;  and  lastly,  which  laid  down  the  rule 
of  hfe  as  marked  out  by  their  human  lot,  and  showed  them 
the  only  path  to  sustained  Happiness.  It  thus  did  three  things. 
It  bound  the  human  powers  into  a  whole,  and  taught  them  to 
work  as  one ;  it  united  men  in  masses  of  believers ;  it  imposed 
on  them  a  rule  of  life.  To  harmonise  the  soul  within,  to  draw 
men  together,  to  regulate  their  whole  lives,  always  was,  and 
still  is,  the  real  business  of  Religion.  The  idea  that  Religion 
is  concerned  only  with  the  Infinite  and  undefined  yearnings 
is  a  modem  piece  of  sentiment. 

The  difficulty  of  the  task  lies  in  this  complexity  of  human 
nature,  its  contrasted  elements,  and  the  overpowering  limita- 
tions upon  man's  destiny  imposed  by  the  facts  of  nature. 
Man  has  instincts,  appetites,  emotions ;  —  violent  or  languid, 
selfish  or  unselfish,  animal  or  tender,  common  or  sublime. 
Man  has  intellectual  powers,  ranging  from  the  lowest  cunning 
to  the  most  lofty  imagination.  He  has  qualities  of  energy, 
prudence,  perseverance,  courage :  faculties  that  may  make  a 
hero,  or  may  make  a  miser  or  a  tyrant.  Besides  all  this  triple 
endowment  of  qualities,  man  is  a  social  being,  and  his  nature 
can  only  be  developed  by  society  with  his  fellows,  and  is 
deeply  modified  by  that  society.  Lastly,  this  complex,  modi- 
fied, social  being  finds  himself  in  a  world  of  tremendous  forces 
and  boundless  opportunities,  where  his  whole  energy  some- 
times can  hardly  sustain  his  life,  which  sometimes  ofiers  un- 
limited gratifications  to  his  appetites,  vast  fields  of  conquest 
to  his  activity,  perpetual  pabulum  for  his  inquiring  thought. 
In  this  Chaos  of  necessities,  allurements,  opportunities  with- 
out, in  this  conflict  of  forces  within  man,  what  is  to  be 
the  spring  of  his  life;  which  is  to  lead,  which  is  to  rule; 
what  is  to  be  the  end,  the  result  of  the  whole?    To  these 


406  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

questions  all  sorts  of  answers  may  be  given,  and  have  been 
given. 

At  the  outset,  the  active  energetic  powers  had  it  all  their 
own  way,  casually  stimulated  first  by  one  passion,  then  by 
another.  Man  thought  just  enough  to  get  his  weapons  or 
win  his  battles.  On  a  large  scale,  too,  some  famous  societies, 
both  in  the  old  world  of  war  and  in  the  modem  world  of  in- 
dustry, have  appeared  to  be  based  on  the  dominant  scheme  of 
activity.  But  societies  or  men  which  are  absorbed  in  the 
blind  rage  for  practical  achievement,  be  it  in  fighting,  robbing, 
producing,  or  trading,  are  soon  found  to  be  unsound.  They 
are  seen  to  be  turned  into  slaves  of  some  ignoble  appetite, 
and  the  force  of  society  about  them,  or  the  facts  of  nature, 
bring  them  down  and  remind  them  that  in  headlong  surrender 
to  activity  they  were  really  the  creatures  of  passion. 

It  has  often  been  suggested  that  the  dominant  element  in 
life  should  be  sought  for  in  some  intellectual  principle  —  in 
the  search  for  truth,  the  superiority  of  knowledge,  and  the 
like.  But  when  we  come  to  examine  it,  we  find  that  the  search 
for  truth  is  not  a  motive  power  at  all.  Truth  can  tell  us  how 
to  do  a  thing,  but  it  cannot  impel  us  to  do  it.  The  motive 
source  must  be  a  feeling,  or  a  desire.  A  profound  knowledge 
of  nature  may  be  used  either  to  enrich  mankind  or  to  commit 
assassination.  Thought  is  neutral  —  it  may  act  under  an  evil 
or  an  indifferent  or  a  noble  motive.  It  always  acts  under  some 
impulse  of  the  feelings,  moral  or  immoral.  Nor  can  thought 
command.  The  mind  gives  light ;  it  does  not  give  force.  It 
is  dispersive,  and  may  exercise  itself  in  the  boundless  fields  of 
curiosity.  By  itself  thought  can  neither  concentrate  man's 
life  on  a  uniform  purpose,  nor  sustain  and  stimulate  him  to 
enduring  action.  Lastly,  it  appears  that  the  intellectual 
energy  of  the  mass  of  mankind  is  far  too  moderate  to  con- 
stitute within  them  a  principle  of  life.     One  in  a  thousand  of 


SCIENCE   AND   HUMANITY  407 

US  may  really  be  capable  of  a  life  of  intellectual  effort.  Nine 
hundred  and  ninety-nine  make  use  of  their  intellects  to  serve 
their  ends.  How  often  beneath  the  show  of  a  passion  for 
intellectual  engrossment  do  we  find  some  refined  egoism,  some 
concealed  vanity  or  ambition  !  The  character  which  is  given 
over  to  speculation  is  often  a  character  of  curious  feebleness. 
A  society  which  proclaims  the  supremacy  of  intellectual 
excitement  is  a  society  without  steadiness,  morality,  dignity, 
or  tenderness. 

Therefore  since  the  harmonising  principle  of  life  cannot 
be  permanently  found  either  in  the  intellectual  or  the  active 
powers,  there  remain  only  the  moral  on  which  we  can  found 
it.  To  which  out  of  the  various  affections  and  appetites  of 
man  are  we  to  turn?  Obviously  not  to  the  lower  appetites, 
or  the  self -regarding  passions;  violent,  necessary  even,  and 
ever-present,  as  some  of  them  are.  It  is  a  contradiction  in 
terms  to  say  that  any  man  was  ever  raised  to  a  higher  nature 
or  became  a  truer  man  by  means  of  consistent  devotion  to  one 
of  his  lower  appetites;  and  it  would  be  equally  paradoxical 
to  pretend  that  societies  of  men  are  civilised  and  united  by 
the  humanising  power  of  the  Gospel  of  selfishness.  We  may 
leave  this  singular  form  of  Religion  to  the  more  fanatical 
disciples  of  the  doctrines  of  Plutonomy. 

It  is  plain  that  the  harmonising  principle  must  be  found 
in  the  higher  or  unselfish  instincts,  in  our  feelings  of  Attach- 
ment, of  Veneration,  of  Goodness :  in  those  fine  gifts  of  our 
nature  which  move  us  to  devote  ourselves  to  something  out- 
side us,  to  humble  ourselves  in  awe  before  something  that  is 
greater  than  ourselves,  to  use  our  powers  for  good,  for  the 
benefit  of  our  fellows  and  the  common  weal. 

And  thus  it  is  that  every  Religion,  or  social  system  of  any 
kind,  which  was  ever  worthy  of  the  name,  has  aimed  at  regu- 
lating human  nature  and  organising  society  by  proclaiming 


408  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

as  the  principle  of  life  the  cultivation  of  some  one  or  more  of 
the  great  social  feelings.  They  have  used  all  sorts  of  devices, 
combinations,  and  forms.  But  priests,  philosophers,  moral- 
ists, and  preachers  of  every  creed  have  ever  said,  "Base 
your  life  upon  a  noble  feeling,  if  you  are  to  live  aright ;  base 
the  State  upon  a  generous  devotion  of  its  members  to  some 
great  ideal,  if  it  is  to  prosper  and  be  strong."  The  old  He- 
brews placed  it  in  submission  to  their  tribal  God,  who  repre- 
sented to  them  the  spirit  of  Theocratic  patriotism.  The  old 
Romans  placed  it  in  courageous  devotion  to  the  Eternal 
Destiny  of  Rome.  The  older  Greeks  placed  it  in  the  adorn- 
ment of  their  lives  and  of  their  cities  with  every  ennobling 
attitude  and  grace.  Christ  and  St.  Paul  placed  it  in  humility, 
charity,  longsuffering,  mercy,  purity.  Mahomet  placed  it  in 
utter  devotion  of  self  to  the  Will  of  an  overruling  Providence. 
The  Catholic  Church  has  found  it  in  Veneration  for  the  divine 
beings,  and  the  cultivation  of  every  Christian  grace.  The 
Protestant  Churches  have  found  it  in  obedience  to  the  written 
word  of  God,  and  the  ever-present  sense  of  saving  the  believer's 
soul  by  a  life  of  Love  and  Faith.  All  of  these  systems  con- 
ceived that  they  could  harmonise  Life  by  placing  it  under  the 
stimulus  of  a  high  unselfish  passion. 

And  they  were  all  right  so  far.  There  is  no  other  basis  on 
which  man's  life  can  be  knit  and  society  ennobled  but  by  con- 
scious devotion  to  some  great  Cause  represented  by  a  dominant 
Power.  It  was  by  virtue  of  this  Truth  that  these  various  socie- 
ties exhibited  such  wonderful  powers,  and  produced  such 
memorable  results.  They  were  strong  by  means  of  it; 
neither  men  nor  races  have  been  strong  without  it.  This  great 
truth  lingers  on  even  in  the  attenuated  fragments  which  sur- 
vive in  the  modem  Theologies  and  Theistic  philosophies. 
Powerless  as  they  are  to  deal  with  contemporary  Thought 
and  Life,  they  still  command  respect  and  a  clinging  devotion 


SCIE-NXE   AND   HUMANITY  409 

from  masses  of  men  and  women,  and  from  some  of  the  noblest 
spirits  of  our  time,  because  in  spite  of  their  want  of  logic,  force, 
humanity,  or  usefulness,  they  still  do  testify  to  the  beauty  of 
holiness,  and  the  inspiring  might  of  a  lofty  sense  of  devotion. 
Now  Positivism  declares  that,  come  what  may,  this  is  the  root 
of  the  matter.  It  holds  with  the  Theologies,  with  all  the 
Theologies,  that  the  key  of  man  and  of  life  is,  as  they  ever 
said  :  Love,  Veneration,  Devotion. 

Wherein,  then,  was  their  utter  and  portentous  failure,  if 
they  were  right  in  this  main  point  ?  How  is  it  that  they  have 
failed  so  strikingly  both  to  assimilate  science  and  to  moralise 
industry?  Why  is  it  that  their  power  is  exerted  but  fitfully 
and  slightly  over  one  comer  alone  of  human  nature,  whilst 
the  breach  they  have  made  with  the  rest  of  human  nature 
grows  wider  and  wider  every  day? 

Obviously,  it  was  because  their  spiritual  elevation  and 
devotion  were  not  according  to  Knowledge  —  not  in  corre- 
spondence with  Fact.  Touching  man's  noblest  feelings  they 
called  on  men  to  bow  down  to  imaginary  beings ;  when  men 
asked  them  for  evidence  of  these  beings  and  proof  of  their 
doings,  the  Theologies  could  only  answer  "Believe  in  faith  !" 
They  invented  childish  theories  about  the  earth  and  our 
world  and  the  facts  of  nature,  and  treated  the  Intellect  of 
Man  as  if  it  were  a  slave.  They  talked  about  the  arbitrary 
intervention  of  mysterious  wills  and  deities,  when  Science 
kept  on  showing  us  for  ever  new  evidence  of  the  Reign  of 
Law  through  the  World  and  a  total  elimination  of  all  arbitrary 
Providences. 

And  when  men  came  to  act,  to  conquer  this  glorious 
earth  and  to  organise  their  practical  life  in  all  the  complica- 
tions of  modem  material  industry,  the  Theologies  of  themselves 
could  do  nothing  to  civilise  and  moralise  it.  They  could 
only  ejaculate  "Lay  not  up  for  yourselves  treasures  where 


410  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

moth  and  rust  doth  corrupt  and  where  thieves  break  through 
and  steal;  but  lay  up  for  yourselves  treasures  in  heaven, 
where  neither  moth  nor  rust  doth  corrupt,  and  where  thieves 
do  not  break  through  and  steal."  Well !  this  was  to  outrage 
the  Intellect  of  man,  to  trifle  with  our  human  energies ;  and 
the  fury  with  which  the  man  of  thought  and  the  man  of  action 
have  so  long  pursued  the  Priest  and  his  Theology  dates  from 
that  day  when,  in  the  name  of  man's  noblest  emotions,  man 
was  ordered  to  forswear  his  reason  and  his  manhood,  and,  if 
he  took  these  precepts  in  their  hteral  sense,  to  debase  him- 
self, to  become  an  idle,  hysterical,  ignorant  mystic.  Love, 
Veneration,  Devotion  —  Yes  !  but  everything  turns  on  what 
or  whom  it  is  that  we  Love,  Venerate,  and  Devote  ourselves 
to  serve;  and  how  these  feelings  may  be  ranged  with  all  we 
know,  and  may  inspire  all  the  work  that  we  find  to  do  in  the 
world. 

The  more  we  look  at  it,  the  more  we  see  that  this  cardinal 
error  lies  at  the  root  of  every  kind  of  Theology,  or  Metaphysical 
Theosophy,  whether  it  take  the  form  of  Catholicism  or  Prot- 
estantism, Polytheism  or  Buddhism,  Spiritualism,  Deism, 
or  Pantheism.  Whether  you  worship  God,  or  the  Virgin 
Mary,  or  the  Principle  of  Good,  or  the  Anima  Mundi,  or  the 
"Eternal  that  makes  for  Righteousness"  —  if  you  concentrate 
the  noblest  sentiments  of  the  human  spirit  on  imaginary  and 
superhuman  objects,  if  you  place  the  ideal  of  happiness  and 
perfection  in  some  supersensuous  kind  of  bliss  —  you  must 
place  the  whole  of  this  influence  that  you  call  Religion  out- 
side the  human  reason,  which  can  only  deal  with  the  rational 
and  the  real,  and  outside  the  human  energies  which  can  only 
act  in  a  human  world.  A  superhuman  creed  may  pretend 
to  tell  man  his  relations  to  the  Infinite,  and  to  prepare  him  for 
eternal  bliss  —  but  what  is  wanted  here  is  something  to  tell 
him  his  relations  to  the  Finite  where  he  now  is,  and  how  he 


SCIENCE  AND    HUMANITY 


411 


is  to  do  his  work  honourably  in  this  transitory  but  very  urgent 
and  very  difficult  bodily  life  on  earth. 

Ill 

Free  Thought  versus  Faith 

But  how  comes  it  that,  if  Theology  is  so  manifestly  unable  to 
perform  its  task,  it  has  so  long  retained  the  hold  it  possesses ; 
how  comes  it  that  the  forces  that  have  driven  it  from  point  to 
point  have  never  succeeded  to  its  place  ?  For  five  centuries 
at  least  in  Europe  the  struggle  has  been  going  on,  and  in 
every  conflict  Theology  has  lost  some  ground.  Over  the 
whole  field  of  physical  science  the  Reign  of  Law  has  been 
steadily  and  for  ever  established.  The  Heavens  no  longer 
declare  the  glory  of  God ;  they  declare  the  glory  of  Kepler, 
Galileo,  Newton.  Neither  Jove  nor  Jehovah  now  manifests 
his  anger  in  the  thunder,  nor  rides  upon  the  wings  of  the 
wind.  The  electric  force  now  binds  two  continents  together, 
and  the  law  of  Storms  is  yielding  up  to  us  the  secrets  of  the 
Gods  of  Heaven.  The  famines,  the  diseases,  and  the  revo- 
lutions which  afflict  mankind  are  no  longer  the  judgments 
of  God.  They  are  the  inevitable  sequences  of  known  and 
preventible  conditions. 

Thus  throughout  the  whole  incalculable  array  of  human 
discoveries,  through  the  vast  field  of  human  industry  and 
labour,  there  has  stretched  itself  out  a  body  of  scientific 
laws  and  a  wealth  of  practical  achievement  which  are  utterly 
incommensurable  with  Theology  of  any  kind.  These  two 
are  for  ever  incompatible  —  as  distinct  from  each  other  as  a 
dream  is  distinct  from  a  demonstration  in  geometry,  as  distinct 
as  a  fairy-tale  is  from  the  invention  of  the  Electric  light.  It 
is  pretended,  indeed,  that  Theology  may  yet  hold  a  place  be- 
side them.     It  is  not  so.     The  Theology  of  Moses,  of  St. 


412  PHILOSOPHY   OF  COMMON   SENSE 

Bernard,  of  Milton  could  not  live  beside  them  for  an  hour. 
If  any  Theology  can  live  w^ithin  their  light,  it  is  the  metaphysi- 
cal puzzle  of  some  ingenious  academic  logician.  How  comes 
it  then  that  this  grand  scientific  movement,  which  has  routed 
Theology  in  every  battle,  has  failed  to  take  its  place  in  the 
world ;  cannot  yet  win  that  loyalty  and  authority  which  have 
ever  been  given  to  Religion  ? 

After  all,  what  is  it  that  these  vast  intellectual  achieve- 
ments can  offer  to  mankind?  Inexhaustible  satisfaction  to 
our  thirst  after  Knowledge ;  perpetual  contrivances  for  mak- 
ing life  richer ;  enchanting  visions  of  yet  brighter  discoveries. 
But  after  that  ?  Nothing  but  boundless  fields  of  knowledge 
and  fresh  matter  for  investigation,  and  fresh  appliances  for 
life.  But  Affection,  Veneration,  Devotion,  what  of  these? 
What  power  do  these  sciences  and  appliances  offer  to  tame 
the  turbulent  passions  and  weld  the  discordant  nature;  in 
the  name  of  what  mighty  force  do  they  claim  man's  Veneration ; 
to  what  service  do  they  bid  him  to  dedicate  his  life?  They 
know  nothing  of  these  things.  They  offer  him  indeed  a  per- 
petuity of  gratified  curiosity,  the  service  of  pure  unalloyed 
Truth,  a  noble  wonder  at  the  immensity  and  complexity  of 
the  All. 

I  will  not  deny  that  there  are  poets  and  philosophers  here 
and  there,  of  rare  and  peculiar  genius,  whom  this  exclusive 
thirst  for  Truth  may  lead  to  bright  and  useful  lives.  But 
what  a  mockery  is  this  passion  for  Truth  to  the  mass  of  the 
men  and  women  around  us,  if  we  tell  them  to  make  it  the 
standard  and  master  of  their  lives.  Curiosity  is  a  low  and 
feeble  motive  to  appeal  to,  if  you  seek  to  lift  rude  men  and 
women  out  of  the  slough  of  their  selfish  passions;  love  of 
knowledge  is  a  fine  thing,  but  does  it  prompt  men  to  succour 
the  miserable  and  protect  the  weak?  Truth  is  sacred,  but 
will  Truth  make  men  generous,  just,  and  tender,  better  fathers 


SCIENCE  AND    HUMANITY  413 

and  husbands,  truer  friends,  braver  citizens,  more  humane 
men  ?  Wonder  is  often  a  healthy  state  of  mind ;  but  will  an 
eternity  of  wonder  at  the  material  world  around  us  fill  us 
with  gratitude,  veneration,  and  resignation,  such  as  the  Mus- 
sulman, or  Catholic,  or  Protestant  felt,  and  may  still  feel,  for 
his  hving  Providence? 

Here  then  for  centuries  there  has  been  waged  the  secular 
conflict  between  Positive  Science  on  the  one  side  and  Theol- 
ogy on  the  other  —  Free  Thought  and  Free  Life  against  a 
Supreme  Faith  and  an  exalted  spirit  of  Devotion.  It  has  long 
seemed  an  insoluble  Dilemma.  Each  has  something  that  the 
other  cannot  destroy.  Each  has  something  that  the  world 
will  not  accept ;  each  wants  something  that  the  world  will  not 
forego.  In  spite  of  all  the  Priests  of  all  the  creeds,  mankind 
will  not  consent  to  surrender  one  jot  of  their  mind's  freedom; 
nor  can  all  the  Preachers  of  a  thousand  sects  persuade  them 
to  give  up  their  interest  in  this  earthly  life.  The  intellect  shall 
be  free ;  and  men  will  care  to  live  in  this  world  and  not  in  any 
other.  On  the  other  hand,  in  spite  of  science,  men  will  not 
rest  in  peace  until  they  have  a  Faith ;  they  cannot  consent  to 
forego  a  religious  sense  of  duty  and  reverence.  How  long  is 
this  battle  to  be  fought  ?    Is  the  Dilemma  for  ever  insoluble  ? 

IV 

Solution  of  the  Dilemma 

Positivism  professes  to  be  the  answer  to  this  momentous 
problem.  The  keynote  of  that  answer  is  as  follows.  There 
must  be  both  Science  and  Devotion,  and  the  two  must  occupy 
the  same  field  and  be  concentrated  on  the  same  object.  Science 
alone.  Theology  alone,  make  a  lame  and  one-sided  scheme  of 
life,  for  neither  is  Religion ;  neither  gives  a  unity ;  and  the  two 
are  incapable  of  ever  coinciding  in  one.     So  long  as  Science 


414  PHILOSOPHY   OF   COMMON   SENSE 

is  engrossed  with  the  physical  facts  around  us,  it  is  impossible 
to  say  that  Science  can  present  us  a  religious  basis  of  Life. 
So  long  as  Faith  is  supposed  to  be  something  opposed  to 
Knowledge,  it  is  impossible  to  say  that  Faith  can  satisfy 
any  rational  mind.  But  the  great  intellectual  fact  of  our 
generation  is  this :  —  that  Science  has  extended  its  domain 
to  the  science  of  Man.  Social  things  have  now  been  brought, 
like  physical  things,  within  the  realm  of  Law.  The  science 
of  Society  —  or  Sociology  —  has  arisen.  It  is  the  unique 
and  resplendent  achievement  of  Auguste  Comte. 

No  rational  thinker  now  denies  that  the  whole  world  of 
human  activity,  of  intellectual  and  moral  power,  is,  like  the 
facts  of  nature,  capable  of  scientific  treatment.  History, 
the  origin  and  development  of  civilisation,  the  economy  of 
our  social  life,  the  secret  springs  of  our  moral  life,  the  laws  of 
our  intellectual  life,  are  all  reduced  to  a  science;  less  exact 
than  our  knowledge  of  the  solar  system,  but  equally  real  and 
far  more  complex.  That  which  of  old  time  was  known  as 
Science  —  the  laws  of  man's  physical  sphere,  or  of  his  physi- 
cal frame  —  is  become  but  the  prologue  and  ante-chamber 
of  Science.  The  great  Science,  the  sacred  Science,  the  crown 
and  summary  of  all  science,  is  the  Science  of  Man. 

And  now  this  new  science  unfolds  to  us  an  issue  out  of  the 
dilemma.  It  reveals  to  us  the  laws  of  a  Force  towards  which 
we  can  feel  the  highest  sense  of  Sympathy,  to  whose  service 
we  can  devote  ourselves,  whose  mighty  Power  over  us  we  can- 
not gainsay,  whilst  we  must  accept  it  with  Love  and  Rever- 
ence. That  Force  is  the  vast  and  overwhelming  consensus 
of  all  human  lives,  the  complex  movement  through  the  ages 
of  human  civilisation  and  thought.  Before  this  crucial  dis- 
covery of  human  Intelligence  it  was  impossible  to  feel  that 
the  truths  of  science  and  our  noblest  sympathies  had  a  com- 
mon object  or  field.     One  might  wonder  at  the  Firmament  of 


SCIENCE  AND   HUMANITY  415 

Stars  and  delight  in  our  study  of  the  planets ;  but  it  was  idle 
to  love  the  Planets,  or  to  feel  ourselves  inspired  by  the  Milky 
Way.  It  was  marvellous  to  track  the  secrets  of  electricity, 
or  the  analysis  of  gases;  but  the  lives  of  men  and  women 
were  never  ordered  by  profound  afifection  for  electricity  or 
gas.  The  study  of  all  the  forms  of  life  upon  the  earth  enlarged 
our  minds,  and  the  physiology  of  the  human  frame  showed 
us  how  fearfully  and  wonderfully  we  are  made;  but  no  man 
could  love  the  Vegetable  or  Animal  kingdoms  as  a  whole. 
Nay,  Anatomy,  or  even  Vivisection  itself,  were  not  found  alto- 
gether conducive  to  a  reverential  and  sympathetic  state  of 
Mind. 

But  when  we  passed  into  Social  Science  and  found  how  all 
the  other  sciences  had  their  issue  and  meaning  in  the  Science 
of  Man,  when  we  found  how  they  all  served  as  the  instruments 
and  materials  for  the  glorious  human  Fabric,  when  we  learned 
how  the  long  succession  of  ages  had  developed  man's  mind 
and  powers,  how  civilisation  was  advancing  with  sure  and 
widening  progress,  how  the  efforts  of  the  human  race  stood 
round  each  of  us  from  the  cradle  to  the  grave,  how  the 
thoughts  of  the  wise,  and  the  works  of  heroes,  and  the  influ- 
ence of  every  noble  life  made  us  what  we  are  —  then  we  felt 
at  last  that  the  Realm  of  Law  was  become  the  Realm  of  Love. 
There  was  now  a  human  Providence  which  watched  over  us, 
taught  us,  guided  us,  ruled  us;  there  was  a  supreme  Power 
which  we  might  serve,  but  with  which  we  could  not  contend ; 
there  was  a  Cause  to  which  to  devote  our  lives  and  which  could 
inspire  all  the  warmth  of  our  souls.  That  cause  was  the  on- 
ward march  of  the  human  race,  and  its  continual  rising  to  a 
better  mode  of  life. 

Thus  then  Science  at  last  has  brought  us  to  the  feet  of  a 
Power  for  which  we  can  feel  all  those  emotions  of  Love,  Ven- 
eration, and  Devotion  that  have  been  so  long  lavished  upon 


4l6  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

the  creations  of  our  fancy  or  our  fear,  Man  can  again  become 
a  religious  being,  for  the  deepest  principle  of  his  nature  is 
again  the  service  of  a  Power  for  Good  above  him.  But  ob- 
serve the  vast  difference  in  the  new  form  that  Religion  has 
taken.  This  Power  for  Good  is  real,  provable,  human. 
It  is  entirely  within  the  sphere  of  the  Intellect,  and  is  mani- 
fested by  the  efforts  of  the  Intellect.  The  intellect  is  no  longer 
the  slave,  or  the  foe,  of  the  devotional  ardour.  It  is  its  help- 
mate, its  guide,  and  instructor.  The  new  Power  is  not  a 
transcendental  ideal  which  drags  man  away  from  his  life  on 
earth.  It  is  as  human  as  himself;  it  offers  not  the  ideal  of 
one  Christ,  but  the  reality  of  all  the  Christs ;  one  with  us, 
tried  as  we  are,  suffering  as  we  are,  bound  by  the  same  laws 
of  matter,  and  united  by  the  same  conditions.  It  is  not,  in- 
deed. Eternal,  Almighty,  Omniscient,  Perfect  —  that  is  to 
say,  it  is  not  unintelligible,  unreal,  unhuman.  If  it  were 
these  things  it  would  stand  apart  from  our  intellects,  and  be 
indifferent  to  the  best  of  our  practical  energies.  But  relatively 
to  us,  it  is  perpetual,  mighty,  provident,  benevolent.  So  that 
if  Religion,  at  first  sight,  seem  in  its  new  form  to  have  lost 
something  in  sublimity  and  intensity,  it  has  gained  everything 
in  reality,  in  comprehensiveness,  in  usefulness,  in  humanity. 
It  is  just  because  the  new  object  of  our  highest  Reverence 
is  brought  down  from  Heaven  to  earth,  is  brought  within  the 
range  of  our  human  powers,  that  it  gives  such  a  mighty  stimu- 
lus to  our  reason,  to  our  energies,  to  our  zeal  for  every  kind  of 
Good.  An  infinite  Trinity,  or  an  infinite  Godhead,  is  indeed 
incomprehensible,  is  above  our  intellect ;  does  not  need  our 
thoughts;  cannot  be  tracked  out  by  finite  minds.  An  Al- 
mighty Creator  does  not  need  our  efforts;  there  is  no  work 
of  His  that  we  can  really  do,  for  His  all-seeing  Providence  can 
baffle  everything  we  attempt.  He  needs  not  our  well-doing, 
for  He  is  beyond  all  service  and  all  good.    We  are  to  give  Him 


SCIENCE  AND    HUMANITY  417 

nothing  but  praises :  we  may  show  our  virtue  by  benevolence ; 
but  virtue  is  not  devoutness;  ''when  we  have  done  all  that  is 
commanded  of  us,  we  must  say,  We  are  unprofitable  servants." 
Silent  adoration  is  all  we  can  really  give.  "Thou  art  neces- 
sary to  me,"  says  the  Catholic  Mystic  to  his  God;  "I  am 
not  necessary  to  thee!"  In  every  way  that  we  turn  it,  an 
Absolute  Perfection  paralyses  our  reason,  unmans  our  energies, 
refines  away  even  active  goodness  into  a  mere  ecstatic  prayer. 
Monks  and  Nuns  are  logically  consistent  with  their  creed. 

But  the  power  of  Humanity  calls  up  every  fibre  of  our  brains 
to  understand  its  organism,  to  learn  its  forces,  and  to  know  its 
difficulties.  We  are  all  necessary  to  Humanity,  for  we  are  a 
part  of  it ;  it  needs  every  faculty  of  our  natures ;  not  a  stroke 
of  our  true  work  is  lost  to  it ;  not  one  of  our  human  offerings 
is  valueless;  every  good  word,  and  act,  and  gentle  touch  has 
its  fruit  and  serves  our  kind ;  every  smile  that  we  shed  upon 
a  child  is  an  act  of  devotion  to  our  Human  Providence. 

And  yet  let  us  beware  of  thinking  that  all  this  is  bounded 
and  ended  by  a  vague  Humanitarianism.  If  Religion  meant 
simply  that  men  and  women  would  be  saved  by  trusting  to 
indefinite  Progress,  by  relying  on  general  goodness,  and  utter- 
ing encomiums  on  human  dignity.  Religion  would  lead  to  some 
extraordinary  types  of  character,  and  would  end  in  as  little 
as  so  many  kinds  of  vague  worship  and  hope.  On  the  con- 
trary, Humanity,  we  say,  is  placed  in  a  hard  world,  and  has  a 
world  of  hard  work  before  it.  There  are  mountains  of  things 
to  be  learned,  of  things  to  be  done,  of  things  to  be  practised. 
All  round  the  human  race  stand  the  hard  forces  of  Matter,  and 
the  difficult  and  complicated  facts  of  science.  Society  cannot 
be  touched  without  knowledge  ;  and  the  knowledge  of  the  so- 
cial organisation  of  humanity  is  a  vast  and  perplexing  science. 
The  race,  like  every  one  of  us,  is  dependent  on  the  laws  of  life, 
and  the  study  of  life  is  a  mighty  field  to  master.    But  life  has  its 

2  E 


41 8  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON   SENSE 

conditions  in  inert  matter,  of  which  chemical  and  physical  laws 
give  us  the  fixed  and  subtle  limits.  Lastly,  our  whole  existence 
is  dependent  on  the  laws  of  the  solar  system  wherein  we  dwell. 

This  vast  array  of  Law  thus  forms  the  condition  and  basis 
of  human  life ;  and  we  can  only  live  rightly  in  so  far  as  we 
live  in  accordance  with  it.  Thus  knowledge,  knowledge  of 
the  laws  mathematical,  astronomical,  chemical,  physical, 
biologic,  social,  moral,  becomes  for  us  not  only  compatible 
with  Religion,  but  essential  to  Religion,  a  part  of  Religion, 
its  foundation  and  Creed.  To  oppose  or  contrast  Science 
and  Religion  would  be,  for  a  Positivist,  as  irrational  as  it 
would  be  in  a  Christian  to  oppose  the  Creeds  and  the  Gospels 
to  Christianity.  With  us  Science  is  Religion,  so  far  that  it  is 
the  Intellectual  aspect  of  Religion.  And  thus  with  us  the 
first  part  of  a  religious  training  is  a  sound  and  rational  educa- 
tion. The  beginning  of  all  service  of  Humanity  is  the  know- 
ledge of  the  laws  of  the  world  which  surrounds  it,  of  the  laws 
of  its  own  nature.  Enthusiasm  for  Humanity,  worship  of 
Humanity  would  be  shallow  sentiment  or  rank  hypocrisy,  if 
it  did  not  imply  unwearying  efforts  to  know  the  Power  we 
pretend  to  serve,  to  master  those  laws  which  reveal  to  us  its 
Destiny,  and  to  carry  that  knowledge  into  act. 

Not  that  this  knowledge  can  ever  remain  a  dry  intellectual 
attainment.  Religion,  as  Comte  has  said,  consists  of  Three 
parts :  a  Belief,  a  Worship,  and  a  Rule  of  life,  of  which  all 
three  are  equal,  and  each  as  necessary  as  any  other.  To 
make  Religion  consist  in  Knowledge  only,  would  be  to  make 
it  end  in  scientific  curiosity.  To  make  it  consist  in  Worship 
only,  would  make  it  end  in  affectation  and  sentimentality. 
To  make  it  consist  in  a  rule  of  life  alone,  would  be  to  make  it 
end  in  Pharisaism.  True  Religion  is  the  combination  of  Be- 
lief, Worship,  Discipline.  Humanity  demands  from  us  the 
best  of  our  brains,  of  our  hearts,  of  our  conduct. 


FREDERIC    HARRISON'S 

MEMORIES  AND  THOUGHTS 

MEN  —  BOOKS  —  CITIES  —  ART 

"  The  personal  note  is  dominant  throughout  Mr.  Harrison's  book, 
which  leaves  us  with  a  sense  of  friendly  and  close  acquaintance  with  a 
writer  in  whom  seriousness  of  purpose,  firm  convictions,  broad  culture, 
and  generous  sympathies  combine  with  the  thinker's  love  of  truth,  the 
artist's  love  of  beauty,  and  a  keen  zest  for  the  joys  of  living.  And  now 
and  again,  in  the  informality  of  his  manner,  he  gives  rein  to  a  whimsi- 
cality, a  wilfulness,  a  petulance,  or  an  extravagance  that  lend  to  his 
style  a  pungent  tang  or  a  pleasing  piquancy.  ...  *  Memories  and 
Thoughts  '  is  a  book  to  read  and  read  again,  compact  of  good  matter 
well  indited."  —  The  Outlook. 

"  It  is  the  fine  tone,  the  genial  atmosphere,  the  rich  suggestiveness, 
of  Mr.  Harrison's  writings  that  attract  the  reader  and  win  him  over  to 
the  cause  of  good  literature."  —  The  Dial,  Chicago. 

"  It  is  not  too  high  praise  to  set  this  among  the  most  interesting  and 
the  most  valuable  books  of  the  last  decade.  It  is  of  course  written  in 
exquisite  style  and  finish,  with  every  charm  of  literary  allusion  and  irra- 
diated with  the  marvellous  wealth  of  knowledge  and  thought  of  the 
author;  but  it  is  something  more  and  better  than  this.  It  is  one  of  the 
most  illuminating  commentaries  upon  the  life  and  thought  of  England 
within  the  seventy  years  it  covers  that  have  been  or  ever  will  be  pub- 
lished." —  Columbia  State. 

Cloth,  crown  8vo,  410  pages,  gilt  top,  $2.00  net 


THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

64  66   FIFTH   AVENUE  NEW  YORK 


By  FREDERIC  HARRISON 

The  Choice  of  Books 

In  Macmillan's  Miniature  Series 
Cloth,  gilt  top,  i6mo,  boxed,  $i.oo  net 

"Mr.  Harrison  is  an  able  and  conscientious  critic,  a  good  logician,  and  a 
clever  man  ;  his  faults  are  superficial  and  his  book  will  not  fail  to  be 
valuable."  —  New  York  Times. 

"  Mr.  Harrison  furnishes  a  valuable  contribution  to  the  subject.  It  is 
full  of  suggestiveness  and  shrewd  analytical  criticism.  It  contains  the 
fruits  of  wide  reading  and  rich  research."  —  London  Times. 

"Those  who  are  curious  as  to  what  they  should  read  in  the  region  of 
pure  literature  will  do  well  to  peruse  my  friend  Frederic  Harrison's 
volume  called  'The  Choice  of  Books.'  You  will  find  there  as  much  wise 
thought,  eloquently  and  brilliantly  put,  as  in  any  volume  of  its  size." 

—  Mr.  John  Morley. 

The  Meaning  of  History 
and  Other  Historical  Essays 

Cloth,  crown  8vo,  $1.7^ 

"  The  volume  places  at  the  disposal  of  the  reader  the  fruits  of  long  and 
thorough  study,  and  in  an  intelligible  and  agreeable  form,  and  not  only 
the  sequence  of  history,  but  also  the  development  of  society  is  outlined. 
The  writer  deals  with  his  themes  in  a  large,  free  manner,  which,  never- 
theless, does  not  lack  concentration  and  force." 

—  The  Congregationalist,  Boston. 

"...  Indeed,  the  brilliant  and  forceful  style  of  Mr.  Harrison,  his 
knowledge  and  grasp,  his  subordination  of  details  to  general  principles, 
fit  him  as  few  are  fitted  to  set  forth  the  educational  value  of  history  and 
to  arouse  enthusiasm  in  the  pursuit  of  historical  studies." 

—  The  Dial,  Chicago. 

"  Mr.  Harrison's  abilities  as  an  historical  writer  are  fully  recognized  by 
many  who  do  not  at  all  agree  with  the  philosophical  views  of  which  he  is 
so  earnest  an  advocate  ;  and  they  might  wish  that  he  had  given  us  more 
books  like  the  present.  There  are  no  better  specimens  of  popular  work,  in 
a  good  sense  of  the  word,  than  are  to  be  found  in  several  of  these  pieces." 

—  The  Academy,  London. 

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of  their  achievements,  and  because  it  attempts  to  give  us  '  a  series 
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of  our  time.' "  —  T/ie  Formn. 

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the  years  of  the  rise  to  power  of  the  little  Republic  of  Holland,  so 
hardly  won  from  the  sea. 

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"Deeply  interesting,  wise,  and  eloquent."  —  Daily  Chronicle,  Lon- 
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CHATHAM 

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"This  life  of  '  the  great  Commoner  '  will  long  remain  the  standard  biog- 
raphy of  the  splendid  orator  and  imperious  statesman,  whom  Walpole 
called  '  the  terrible  cornet  of  horse.'  Macaulay's  famous  essay  is  more 
vivid  and  brilliant,  but  it  lacks  the  balanced  judgment  of  the  present  vol- 
ume, which  stands  alone  in  its  analysis  of  Chatham's  powers  and  in  its 
estimate  of  his  great  public  services."  —  Living  Church. 

"  If  the  intellectual  greatness  of  a  man  is  to  be  attested  by  the  verdict 
not  only  of  contemporaries  but  of  posterity,  and  if  the  splendor  of 
achievement  is  to  be  measured  by  its  durability,  it  must  be  acknowledged 
that  no  other  British  statesman,  not  even  his  own  son,  the  younger  Pitt, 
can  vie  with  him  who  is  best  known  to  us  as  the  Earl  of  Chatham.  Worthily 
to  portray  him  is  the  task  at  which  many  an  accomplished  man  of  letters 
has  tried  his  hand,  from  Horace  Walpole  to  Macaulay,  and  nobody  has 
produced  a  sketch  so  adequate,  so  sympathetic,  yet  withal  so  discrimina 
tive  as  that  for  which  we  are  indebted  to  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison."  — 
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JOHN  RUSKIN 

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tional opportunity  for  observing.  The  biography  is  characterized  by 
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ject." —  Interior. 


GEORGE  WASHINGTON 

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is  in  a  high  and  stimulating  strain  .  .  .  and  its  frank  admiration  for  the 
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CENTRAL  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 
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UCSD  Libr. 

